Tinder
by QuestofDreams
Summary: SasuNaru main. Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates. Also NaruHinata, SasukeOC, and LeeSakura.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Tinder  
**Rated**: R  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu (also NarutoxHinata, SasukexOC, and LeexSakura)  
**Warnings**: Adultery  
**Notes**: For **silverwyrm**.

***I started this fic back in 2007 and never got around to finishing it until now. As such, _it is only canon compliant up to ch 364, and deviates immediately after the Sasuke and Deidara fight_. I didn't address Itachi at all, because at the time, we didn't yet know much about his motives or Konoha's part in the Uchiha massacre. This story is told completely from Sakura's point of view. As a result, Sakura's day-to-day life will be present, but since this is a _SasukexNaruto_ fic, the majority of it will be in passing and/or glossed over.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates.

..

..

**Chapter 1**

It was fall in Konoha, the sweltering heat of the summer months having passed without incident, and all was well.

At the Academy, Sakura presided over her classroom, her students sitting with their heads bowed over the final exam of the second trimester.

In the second row up, a boy sat hunched over his test, dark hair falling across his brow in a way that was sweetly reminiscent of his father. Sakura smiled as her gaze settled on him, her fingers tapping a random tune against the stack of papers she'd been grading.

Saizo had entered the Academy the year before and had risen to the top of his class. He was already receiving lessons far more advanced than others within his age group. In fact, Sakura estimated the boy would be ready for graduation within another year. Sasuke had been so proud that he had actually cracked a grin—until Naruto ruined it by remarking on how Saizo's intelligence couldn't have been inherited from his father seeing as Sasuke hadn't graduated until age twelve.

It was clear, however, that Saizo was an Uchiha in every sense of the word.

Watching him, she could see the moment he finished his exam. A small smirk twisted his lips and his dark eyes scanned over his sheet, double checking his work. She felt a pang of something not quite nostalgia as Saizo sat back in his seat and crossed his arms.

There was very little of his mother in his features save for the full curve of his lips. Barring that, Sakura might have thought she was looking at a young Sasuke, the similarities apparent from the set of his shoulders to the spiked back of his head.

The entire village had done a double take when Sasuke returned a year after the war with a pregnant wife in tow. Sakura had only just turned eighteen and, despite the passage of time, had still been a little in love with her former teammate. But Sasuke had returned to Konoha for only one reason—to rebuild his clan, and neither she nor Naruto had been factored in at the time.

To everyone's surprise, the Hokage herself had vouched for Sasuke's re-admittance. The council took into account Sasuke's role in removing Orochimaru as a threat, along with several Akatsuki members—all of which had been advantageous to Konoha in the war that ensued even though Sasuke's actions at the time had been purely self-motivated. The fact that Sasuke had a pregnant wife to bolster his claim of rebuilding his clan had helped.

In the end, the prospect of restoring one of Konoha's most powerful clans had overridden the council's doubts. Sasuke had been granted a pardon with two year's worth of strict probation—the ninja equivalent to a slap on the wrist. It had been anti-climactic; Sakura and Naruto couldn't have been more pleased.

Still, she'd been suspicious, envious even, of the woman Sasuke called wife. But Naruto had warmed up to her immediately, claiming that any woman who could put up with Sasuke was well worth the effort of befriending. Even though Sasuke had resisted at first, the three of them had gradually grown back into a team and Sakura had conceded that having her second family together and whole again was worth much more than petty jealousy.

Saizo was now fidgeting in his seat, no doubt growing annoyed that he had to wait for the end of the period to leave even though he'd completed his exam well before his classmates. In that respect, he was also very much like Sasuke—so eager to grow up and develop his potential. Naruto, to Sasuke's chagrin, had become his children's favored uncle. Whenever Naruto was present, Saizo transformed into the hyper eight-year-old that he was, rather than a stoic little ninja in the making.

She glanced out the window at the trees standing just beyond the walls of her classroom. Sasuke and Naruto were out there, on a mission somewhere in River Country. Sakura had requested she be allowed to join them, but the mission was low risk and a medic had been deemed unnecessary.

A small clock sitting at the corner of her desk chimed. Sakura cleared her throat.

"All right, everyone, time's up. Please leave your exams on my desk before you leave."

The students who had failed to finish groaned, and Sakura smiled indulgently. Babysitting Sasuke's children had cultivated much more patience within her than she had ever had as a teenager.

Saizo dropped his exam in the growing pile on her desk and paused. "Sakura-sensei, will you be over for dinner tonight?"

Sakura could only assume that Saizo had Sasuke's smile because it wasn't his mother's. His smiles warmed her in the same way that Naruto's did. They told her that, despite the past, things would be okay. Sasuke had proven to be a very good father.

"I'm sorry, Saizo-san. I'm going to be helping Hinata with dinner tonight." Sakura reached out and patted his head. Saizo grinned, at ease with the affection.

"Tomorrow then, okay?"

Sakura glanced toward the door where a woman had entered, two small children trailing behind her. "I'll try," she said. She gestured at the new arrivals. "Your mom is here."

Saizo turned, small fists shoved into his pockets. "Mom, do I have to go shopping? I need to train."

"Now now, Saizo, we agreed this morning that you'd help me with the groceries. Be a good brother and take your siblings outside so I can say hello to Sakura." Sasuke's wife nudged her son towards her other children.

A little girl with long black hair latched herself to Saizo's arm, beaming up at her brother with a huge, gap-toothed grin. "Saaaiiizo, tell me what you learned today."

Mikoto was six, two years younger than Saizo, and demanded daily to hear about what Saizo had learned. Sakura thought it endearing how eager she was to join her brother at the Academy. Judging by Saizo's expression, he felt differently. With a low grumble, he reached down to take his other sibling's hand. Juzou, who was five, was the youngest of Sasuke's children. He crossed his arms and affected a pout not unlike his older brother's. A stern look from his mother, however, and he quickly took Saizo's hand.

"Have a good evening, Saizo-san," Sakura said. Beside her, Sasuke's wife shifted on her feet. Sakura stood from behind her desk, embarrassed by her temporary lapse in manners. "Kosuke, how have you been?"

Kosuke brushed aside her bangs and shrugged once. "Fine, thank you. Sasuke began teaching Juzou how to handle shuriken before he left." She paused to laugh, tiny crows feet wrinkling the corners of her eyes.

Kosuke had been barely older than Sakura when she'd first arrived with Sasuke. She'd had pretty blue eyes that bore the weight of her travels, and her smiles had been weary and guarded. But that had changed, and she had welcomed Sakura's friendship. Kosuke was still young, but the years had left their mark in the premature wrinkles. Sakura studied her face, wondering if those lines had been put there by laughter shared with Sasuke. Somehow, she doubted it.

"He makes Mikoto practice with him in the evenings after dinner since Saizo is so stubborn. Saizo won't practice with anyone but his father or Naruto. Or you, of course."

Sakura turned to gather up her papers and the new stack of freshly completed exams. "Saizo-kun is a wonderful boy and he'll make a formidable ninja some day. I'll try to stop by sometime this week to show him some medical jutsu." It was her private hope that Saizo would become a medic. The boy was a prodigy and already far superior to his peers in chakra control. He had shown interest in her medical jutsu, but that had flagged after Sasuke introduced his son to the tradition of Uchiha fire jutsu.

"Thank you, Sakura. Join us for dinner tomorrow, won't you?"

"I'll try."

Sakura bowed and watched Kosuke herd away her small family of dark-eyed, black-haired children.

oOo

Sakura stopped at home just long enough to drop off her papers and change out of her jounin uniform. Her apartment was located near the hospital, which made it convenient for her to rush over in the case of emergencies—which was common in their line of work.

Her home wasn't the traditional sprawl of pillars and panels like Sasuke's, nor was it an amalgamation of traditional and modern architecture like Naruto's. Her apartment was small and neat, decorated sparsely with a few potted plants, a large vase or painting, and several framed pictures of Team Seven as they progressed through the years. Having a functional living space to eat and sleep was really all she needed out of her home and she rarely let herself believe otherwise.

Naruto and Hinata lived in a quaint little house near the border of the village. Sakura suspected Naruto had selected it to be as far away from the Hyuuga district as possible.

The Hyuuga traditions were something Naruto had little tolerance for and, in one of his spontaneous fits of emotion, he had loudly informed Hinata's father how he felt. Needless to say, it had not endeared him to Hyuuga Hiashi. It had taken Naruto two years of courtship before Hiashi would even acknowledge him as a suitor for the future head of Hyuuga.

Sakura climbed the stairs to the front door of Naruto and Hinata's home. Before her knuckles even brushed the dark wood, Hinata's voice rang out from within the house.

"Come in! The door's open."

Inside, Hinata was standing at the counter slicing what looked like ginger root into thin round disks. Sakura toed off her sandals and set them along the wall.

"How was your day?" Hinata asked.

Sakura replied accordingly and set about helping her prepare dinner. She moved through the kitchen, well familiar with where things were kept. The house was small, considering Naruto had insisted on buying the home with his own savings. But what it lacked in space, it made up for in character.

Hinata had dug an herb garden in the back, and Naruto, with Sasuke's help, had built a small gazebo beside it where the couple could lounge on warm days. Both Naruto's and Hinata's teams had made it a group project to paint the interior of the house. The memory of that day remained one of Sakura's most cherished. Sasuke had brought Saizo along, but the child's presence hadn't deterred Naruto and Kiba from painting a lewd mural on the living room wall.

Sakura smiled fondly at the memory. As she sliced a slab of beef into thin strips, her gaze wandered to a photo of Naruto and Sasuke hanging above the dinner table. It had been taken a year after Sasuke's return. Sasuke looked stiff, glaring reproachfully at the camera, while Naruto had a grin twice the size of his face, his arm slung around Sasuke's shoulder. Framing it on either side were photos of Team Seven and Team Eight in their early twenties.

"It's awfully quiet here when Naruto isn't around," Sakura said. She transferred the pile of sliced meat onto a clean plate and set the cutting board in the sink.

Hinata stood at the stove, heating an oiled pan. "It's not so bad; Kiba and Shino visit me a lot. But I guess it does feel odd sometimes when it's just me."

Sakura arched an eyebrow and grinned. "Does that mean I should brace myself for miniature Narutos in the near future?"

Hinata paused in stirring the vegetables. She tilted her head at Sakura for a moment, expression puzzled, before comprehension dawned. Then she ducked her head, cheeks flushed. "Er...n-no. Naruto and I decided we're not ready to set aside our ninja duties to raise a child yet. It's a big responsibility."

Sakura did her best to hide her disappointment. Naruto had been speechless the first time he'd held Saizo. There had been wonder in his face when he'd looked up at Sasuke, as if awe-struck that his perpetually temperamental teammate had really had a hand in creating such a tiny, perfect person.

"Yes, I suppose you're right."

"I'm leaving in the morning for a mission, but I hope to be back in a few days. If Naruto returns while I'm gone, you wouldn't mind making sure he doesn't eat just ramen, would you?"

Sakura laughed and readily agreed, although she had yet to succeed in tearing Naruto away from Ichiraku when Hinata wasn't available to cook.

As it was only the two of them, they moved into the living room to eat. They sat at either end of the sofa, warm bowls cradled in their laps. Hinata chattered on about recent events within her team and Sakura was content to listen. The woman had a soft voice, pleasant and soothing, a perfect complement to Naruto's braying tones.

Above the mantle was a large portrait of Hinata and Naruto taken only the year before on their wedding day. Hinata stood perhaps a bit closer to Naruto than was deemed appropriate, but the smile on her bright red lips made it clear that she had been unconcerned with etiquette. Sakura remembered how Naruto's breath had caught when he'd seen her in her kimono—white silk brocade woven through with silver thread. Naruto looked equally stunning in his dark blue hakama. Sasuke, in an unexpected show of thoughtfulness, had gifted Naruto with the formal attire, knowing Naruto wouldn't have the means of acquiring it himself.

In the most recent photo of the pair, Sasuke's arms were crossed and he was smirking, his gaze directed towards Naruto's happy grin. Naruto had always had a way of getting under one's skin, and Sasuke was no exception. She thought perhaps she understood how Sasuke must feel with Naruto—like they weren't grown men with families and obligations outside of their ninja duties, like they were still genin trying to outdo each other, like perhaps time hadn't changed them quite as much as he thought.

"Do you think you'll be wanting your own team soon?" Hinata asked, after a lengthy account of her genin team's latest exploits in Suna.

Sakura turned away from the grinning faces behind the thin glass. Hinata was holding her empty bowl in her lap, her chopsticks sitting across the rim. "I already have a whole class of kids, and I love working at the hospital. I'll probably wait a couple more years before submitting myself to take on a team."

Sakura wasn't sure she'd ever want a team, considering the trials she'd gone through with Team Seven. Every Konoha jounin was required to train at least one team during their career, but Sakura planned to hold off on that obligation for as long as possible.

"And Lee? How's his team?"

"They're away on a mission. C class, minor reconnaissance. They should be back soon." Lee loved his team and pushed them hard to be the best. Despite his exuberance and the impossible regimen he set for them, his kids seemed attached to him. Sakura had met them a few times when Lee had brought them around, and the boys had been quietly impressed that he not only had a girlfriend, but that she was the Hokage's apprentice.

After cleaning up, Sakura left for the night with a promise to visit again when Hinata returned from her mission.

The night was warm with the dry taste of ash in the air. Her feet carried her back home, and once again, she felt that tiny twist in her gut.

She could say in all honesty that she was happy with her present circumstances. She was renowned as the Hokage's apprentice, and she enjoyed the work she did both at the hospital and at the Academy—they validated her in ways that she hadn't known she'd needed. Therefore, she refused to acknowledge the tiny lump of doubt sitting at the pit of her stomach.

It was silly to feel inadequate just because she was going home to an empty apartment. So what if both her teammates—the most socially inept people she knew—had settled down before her? Sasuke and Naruto had always been the ones charging forward while she hung back and evaluated the situation. It was stupid to feel even remotely bitter that, even in this, Naruto and Sasuke had left her behind.

She straightened and scolded herself for her thoughts. Naruto and Sasuke deserved every bit of happiness they had, and she would never wish otherwise. Besides, she had a boyfriend who was not only fiercely loyal, but doted on her as if she were the only woman in the world—and really, what more could a kunoichi ask for in a man (aside from slightly thinner eyebrows, which could be easily rectified with handy tweezers if the impulse ever struck her)?

With a smile firmly in place, Sakura continued home and prepared herself for a night of grading exams.

oOo

Being the Hokage's apprentice and a medic, Sakura was never technically 'off duty'. But Sundays were generally slow and her shift was only a few hours in the afternoon. She used the free time to do her grocery shopping and visit the Yamanaka flower shop where Ino could be found when she wasn't away on a mission.

She was headed in that direction, her grocery bags a slight weight in her right hand, when she spotted a familiar head of blond hair between the flaps of the ramen stand. Remembering the promise she'd made Hinata, she switched the bags to her left hand and crossed the road.

"Naruto," she said. He glanced over his shoulder as she entered and took the empty stool beside him. "I heard you and Sasuke got back yesterday. Why didn't you come say hello?"

Naruto grinned. She frowned at the tightness around his mouth. "I was pretty tired—didn't feel like leaving the house." In his left hand he held a crumpled napkin, his fingers clenching and unclenching around it.

"How did it go? The mission, I mean." She set her bags on the ground beside her feet. Naruto's smile sagged at the corners and he stared down into the murky broth in his bowl, expression shuttered.

"It was fine. Just some stolen goods and a missing nin. Nothing we couldn't handle." He heaped a mound of noodles into his mouth and hadn't even swallowed before shoving in another mouthful. It wasn't any different than his usual abysmal table manners, but she was given the impression that he was deliberately avoiding having to talk.

"I promised Hinata I'd make sure you didn't eat just ramen while she's gone."

He choked a bit before pounding a fist against his chest and coughing lightly. "Hinata—she's great like that."

She nodded in agreement. She smiled when he glanced at her but his gaze darted away just as quickly. He jabbed at the contents of his bowl with his chopsticks and worried his bottom lip between his teeth.

She sighed. "Okay, spill it. What happened?"

He started so violently that for a moment she was sure he'd fall right off his stool. But then he composed himself and made a rather unconvincing attempt at appearing nonchalant.

"W-what are you talking about?" He lifted his bowl to drink the broth, but Sakura slapped a hand over his wrist, pinning both the bowl and his hand to the counter.

"Don't play dumb with me, Naruto. You're an awful liar. Did you and Sasuke have another fight?"

Some indecipherable emotion tightened his features, but it was so brief she couldn't be sure what she'd seen. Her hand released his and she waited a moment but his face remained still.

He turned to her, eyes laden with something she couldn't make out, and said, "We didn't have a fight."

She might have believed him if not for the way his shoulders bunched up. He abruptly dropped the napkin crumpled in his fist, as if having forgotten it was there. Then he shoved his hand beneath his thigh and started on his second bowl with renewed vigor.

Something was obviously bothering him, and if it wasn't a fight with Sasuke, then she wasn't sure what else it could be. But his demeanor suggested that he very much did _not_ want to talk about it, and she supposed she could respect that—for now.

"So are we still on for dinner tonight?" She forced a smile and affected a casual air for Naruto's sake. She felt her effort fizzle as his jaw tightened and his gaze slid away from his bowl to some indistinguishable spot to his right.

"I'm still pretty tired. I'd rather just stay home."

The lie was rather thin, considering Naruto's energy could probably light up all of Konoha for a month. He never begged off on their weekly Sunday dinners unless he and Sasuke had pissed each other off. She didn't even know what the two fought about anymore—Sasuke had grown marginally (a very miniscule margin, but still an improvement) mellower in fatherhood, and Naruto had matured with age. Yet, on occasion, they continued to turn up covered in dirt and bruises, as if they were still incapable of settling a dispute without having to digress to schoolyard tussles.

Normally, all they needed was a few days to cool off and then they could be spotted training together again, whatever quarrel between them forgotten.

She would have left it alone but imagining Naruto in his house, eating instant ramen by himself at his small table was a dismal image indeed. "Well then how about we have dinner at your place? I'll cook."

He set his chopsticks down and wiped his mouth with a spare napkin. "Sorry, Sakura-chan. I'm not... I'd rather be by myself tonight. Have fun with Sasuke."

He dropped some money on the counter and disappeared before she could even open her mouth to argue. She huffed at his departure before scooping up her grocery bags. Instead of continuing on to the flower shop, she headed back home, no longer in the mood for a social call.

oOo

There was a bouquet of flowers sitting on Sakura's desk when she arrived at the hospital for her shift. Attached to the vase was a bright green card with the words 'To My Beautiful Flower Sakura! Yours, Lee' written in bold red marker. Familiar warmth settled in her chest, and she sniffed the arrangement happily.

She'd returned home earlier to find a note slipped beneath her door. Lee and his genin team had returned from their mission, one of many consecutive missions they'd been on for the last several months. The flow of assignments had finally ebbed, and her apartment had probably been his first stop upon returning. She felt guilty for not being available, but his note had requested dinner for Monday night, and they'd established enough of an understanding that Sakura hadn't needed to send a response.

She looked forward to seeing him. For all the time she spent shuffling between her two jobs, Lee was never far from her thoughts. He made her happy with nothing more than his presence, which was always a relief after long hours at the hospital or days like this one, when the two other men in her life chose to be exasperating idiots.

She set the vase by the window before collecting her clipboard and skimming her schedule for the next few hours.

Shizune was on call for emergencies, but she doubted they would see much activity for the afternoon. As one of four Junior Head Medics, she shared an office with the other three but rarely saw them. Their shifts were all arranged around one another to ensure at least one of them was present at the hospital at all times.

She passed the lobby and glanced up when her peripheral vision caught a flash of black. Kosuke was standing at the front desk speaking to the nurse. Mikoto and Juzou stood at her side. Mikoto was glaring a hole into the linoleum, her lips forming a stubborn pout that was not unlike Sasuke's back in his Academy days. Juzou was holding his arm to his chest, his dark eyes wide and watery, bottom lip trembling.

Sakura crossed the short distance to them and dropped to a crouch in front of Juzou. "Can I see your arm?" she asked, tempering her voice to sound as soothing and undemanding as possible.

Juzou wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand before sticking out his other arm for her to inspect. Sakura squeezed his hand before pushing back the sleeve of his shirt. There was a thin pad of gauze taped to his arm and she peeled it back, careful not to aggravate the skin beneath. Beneath the gauze was a thin cut, about two inches long, across the length of his forearm.

"Sakura! I didn't see you there."

Sakura looked up to see Kosuke smiling down at her. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you. What happened?"

Kosuke smiled indulgently at her son and ran her fingers through his dark hair. "Mikoto and Juzou were practicing shuriken. Mikoto missed the tree and clipped her brother."

Mikoto's face screwed up. "I said I was sorry!"

Kosuke pulled her daughter into a hug. "It's okay, Mikoto. Juzou knows you didn't mean it."

"That looks like it hurts," Sakura said, making an exaggerated face that wrung a reluctant smile from Juzou. "Let's see if we can take care of it."

She placed a hand over the thin cut and gathered her chakra. The skin of her palm tingled pleasantly, her chakra seeking out the broken skin and knitting it back together.

"Sasuke didn't think a hospital visit was necessary, but Juzou kept making such a fuss," Kosuke said. She kissed the top of Mikoto's head before bending over to observe Sakura's work.

"There! All better." Sakura sat back and grinned at the way Juzou rubbed his hand over the spot where the cut had been.

His lips curved into a smile, and he cast her a shy glance before whispering, "Thank you."

Sakura pushed to her feet and ruffled his hair. Unlike Sasuke's and Saizo's, his hair cooperated with gravity and lay flat against his head. "You're very welcome."

"Thank you, Sakura. Juzou can be rather dramatic sometimes," Kosuke said.

_He gets it from his father_, Sakura thought with a mental snort. "He'll be tough like his brother in no time," she said. "Speaking of which, how is Saizo-kun doing?"

"Sasuke took Saizo down to the lake to teach him another fire jutsu. He's learning so quickly."

Sakura swelled with pride. She knew she shouldn't favor her students, but Saizo was Sasuke's son and like a nephew to her. "Saizo-kun is going to outgrow the Academy very soon."

"I'm going next year!"

Mikoto was bouncing on her heels, her previous distress at hurting her brother forgotten.

Sakura hugged her clipboard to her chest and leaned over to meet Mikoto's eye level. "I bet you'll be just as amazing as your brother."

Mikoto nodded so enthusiastically that her ponytail sagged and her bangs fell across her eyes.

"Oh!" Kosuke said, as if just recalling something. "Sasuke wanted me to tell you that he can't make the dinner tonight."

Sakura straightened, her fingers tightening over the hard edge of her clipboard. Sasuke also reneging on their dinner plans was as solid a confirmation as she was likely to get about the two men bickering. "I see. Did he say why?"

Kosuke shook her head. "No... He's been more withdrawn than usual since he returned. But he gets like that sometimes. I try not to worry."

Sakura nodded, mentally commending the woman for tolerating Sasuke's moods for eight years. "He and Naruto probably got into a fight during their mission. I'm sure it'll blow over in a day or two."

"I hope so." Kosuke reached down to take Mikoto and Juzou in each hand.

"I was wondering," Sakura said, before Kosuke could turn away. "Would it be all right if I dropped by in a couple hours to teach Saizo-kun a new medical jutsu?"

"Oh, of course. Saizo loves your visits. I'm sure Sasuke would enjoy your company as well."

Sakura wasn't so sure, but she smiled anyway as Kosuke led her children away. Sasuke appreciated the time she spent with his children—she knew this because he had confessed it to her one year on her birthday after Naruto had jabbed him in the ribs and muttered not so discreetly '_tell her, you asshole_.' But he always seemed to know beforehand when she was fishing for answers and subsequently made himself scarce to avoid having to dodge her questions. If he or Naruto would just _talk_ to her then she wouldn't have to always worry about them in the first place.

After Sasuke had been reinstated as a Konoha ninja, she had felt awkward in his presence, not yet adjusted to having him back again and present on missions. But after a few missions, they had relearned how to function as a team and, a dozen or so missions later, had settled into the kind of camaraderie they hadn't shared since before he'd left Konoha.

There was a comfort and trust between the three of them now that had taken years and far too much pain to cultivate. Secure in this knowledge, she was confident that whatever squabble the men were having would pass soon enough.

The broken look in Naruto's eyes haunted her throughout the rest of her shift.

..

..

A/N: A _huge_ thank you to those who helped critique this last year when I requested help with it. It was greatly appreciated and I can't thank you enough. You're all so amazing and giving


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Tinder  
**Rated**: R  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu (also NarutoxHinata, SasukexOC, and LeexSakura)  
**Warnings**: Adultery  
**Comments**: Canon compliant up to ch 364, and deviates immediately after the Sasuke and Deidara fight. No mention of Itachi.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates.

..

..

**Chapter 2**

The whine of air from the silver ducts of Kosuke's wind chimes was a melancholy greeting as Sakura passed through the open gate. Kosuke always had a smile to spare, but sometimes, the same discordant tones seemed to echo within the woman's eyes. It was something Sakura had never had the courage to ask about.

She climbed the wooden steps and knocked on the door, gaze flitting up to watch the chimes spin lazily.

The door slid open, and Sasuke greeted her with a nod. "Sakura. Come in."

She followed him in and slid her shoes off. Kosuke kept an impeccably clean home, and Sakura always felt paranoid about shifting a single mat out of place. How the woman managed to clean with three children running around was a mystery.

"How are you, Sasuke?" she asked, watching with interest the arranged indifference in his face.

He gave a delicate shrug with one shoulder, lips tightening for only a moment. "Fine. Saizo is out back with the other children."

Sasuke led her through the house, toward the glow of sunlight that spilled across the paneled walls through the open backdoors. Her gaze traced the tense lines of his back, the swing of his arms at his side, the flicker of a frown that briefly betrayed his thoughts. She bit her lip.

"Sasuke, did you want to go with me to Naruto's house later? If I don't bring him a decent meal, he'll be having ramen for dinner and—"

"Naruto is an adult," Sasuke said, cutting her off. His voice was a bit too curt to be casual. "He's capable of feeding himself."

Sakura swallowed back an annoyed retort and crossed her arms. "I'm sure Naruto will appreciate the company. What are you doing tonight that's so busy, you had to cancel dinner with us?"

He cast her a impatient look. "I have things to do. And unless I'm mistaken, Naruto begged out too."

She glanced away. "That's not the point. Hinata is away on a mission and Naruto—"

"Then you go and keep him company if you're so concerned," he said, his tone of voice making it clear he had nothing else to say on the matter.

Sakura bristled and marched past him through the open doors and down the back stairs. "Stupid men and their stupid stubborn..." she muttered, just loud enough so that he heard.

Sasuke had clearly been the architect behind the design of his yard. A broad circular area of hard-packed dirt sat to the left of the wide space. Saizo stood in its center, performing katas that Sakura recognized as Sasuke's routine. Watching him was almost painfully nostalgic for how much he looked like his father.

Along the back fence, a row of dummies was planted with bright red paint marking their vitals. Shuriken were still buried in a few of them. Directly right of them was a veritable jungle of ropes, wire, and wooden poles, in the midst of which was Mikoto, darting and swinging through the maze and giggling like a crazed monkey. Her hair was braided back to keep it from catching in the wires, and she wore bright orange shorts that Naruto had given her for her birthday (which Sasuke had tried to return), and a plain black shirt with the uchiha crest on the back.

The area was practical and functional for Sasuke's troop of budding ninjas. Kosuke's space was to the immediate right, nestled behind the house and sectioned off by a perimeter of short wooden planks. There, she was crouched over a row of tomatoes, dirt smudged fingers sifting through the leaves, and her hair tied back with a kerchief. Juzou knelt beside her, knees sinking into the moist earth. Kosuke dusted off her hands and rose to her feet, offering Sakura a smile in greeting.

"I'm glad you came, Sakura. Saizo was so excited to hear you were going to teach him something new. Why don't you stay for dinner?" She tugged at the back of her apron to release the ties and handed it to Juzou, who took it without a word and headed inside to put it away.

Sakura shook her head, softening the refusal with a smile. "I'll probably go back to the hospital later to see if they need any extra hands. I'll eat at the cafeteria there."

"Sakura-sensei!"

Saizo bounded across the yard, face split into a happy grin. Sasuke's entire demeanor changed. The flinty hardness in his expression fell away, and the stiffness in his shoulders melted into a relaxed angle as he stepped forward and placed a hand on Saizo's shoulder. His lips quirked into the hint of a smile, and Sakura, to her dismay, could feel her earlier irritation with him dissolve into a pool of affection.

It was absurd what a soft look from him could still do to her, even if he reserved them exclusively for his children. She supposed, in a way, she was still a little in love with him, although it was more now about the man he'd become rather than the boy he'd been.

"Hey Dad," Saizo said, grinning up at Sasuke. The blatant hero worship in his eyes made Sakura laugh quietly into her palm.

Sasuke had thought it important that his children be taught about the history of the Uchiha clan, something Sakura only discovered when Saizo had come to her one day between classes, angry tears streaking his red cheeks. As part of the curriculum, the children were taught the history of the village and Sasuke's role in the most recent war had been touched upon. Another student had recognized the crest on Saizo's shirt and accused his father of being a traitor and a disgrace.

Saizo hadn't retaliated--if he got into a fight, his dad would have been called, and Saizo would have had to tell Sasuke what the fight had been about. Instead, Saizo had gone to Sakura, full of helpless fury and shouting about how no one had a right to call his dad a traitor, much less ignorant brats who knew nothing about the Uchiha. He'd told Sakura then that Sasuke had educated him about the massacre and Uchiha Madara and everything his father had done in his youth as a missing nin. Sakura had been stunned, not only by the fact Saizo knew his clan's history, but that he understood and didn't judge how complicated Sasuke was.

"So what are you going to teach me?" Saizo bounced on the balls of his feet, his energy contagious.

"Well, since you've pretty much mastered chakra control, I was thinking I'd teach you how to heal minor cuts." She glanced up and met Kosuke's amused look. "So the next time one of your siblings misses in target practice, you can heal them."

Saizo seemed to consider this before nodding in approval. "Let's go over here," he said. He snatched her hand up and tugged her to an empty corner of the yard.

For the next hour, she made small cuts in her arm with her kunai and let Saizo practice on her. Mikoto wandered over to observe Saizo's progress from time to time, but didn't yet have the patience to sit still for so long and labor over such a careful process. But the time passed quickly and soon Kosuke was calling for the children to wash up for dinner.

Saizo frowned, glowing fingers making a final pass over the newly knit skin on Sakura's forearm. "I'll ask Dad if I can practice on him later."

Sakura grinned. She stood and dusted off the bottom of her skirt. "I'm sure your father won't mind. But you don't need much more practice. You learned that faster than I did when I was thirteen," she said.

Saizo beamed at the praise, round cheeks flushing with pride.

She followed him back into the house where Kosuke asked her to stay for dinner a second time and, again, she declined. It wouldn't have been right for her to stay when, were the two men not so juvenile, the three of them could have been gathered around a table, sharing a meal while Naruto regaled her with embellished tales of his heroics during their mission.

The sun had begun to set and she turned a corner towards the hospital. It occurred to her, as she mentally rewound the day, that Sasuke and Kosuke had barely spoken to each other the whole of her visit.

oOo

Sakura brushed away a lock of hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail. She tucked it behind her ear as her other hand tapped her pen against the edge of her desk. She blew air into her cheeks and released it on a heavy sigh before tossing her pen down, resigned to the fact that her mind refused to focus on her work. She should have been filling out a performance review for a nurse who Shizune had hired a few months ago, but couldn't concentrate on writing more than a few words at a time.

She stood from her chair, her legs having begun to cramp, and glanced at the clock across the room. She was deliberating the merits of an early lunch when the phone on her desk beeped. Alternately hoping it was and wasn't something urgent, she pressed the speaker button.

"Sakura here."

"Sakura-san." Sakura recognized the voice of the receptionist down in the lobby. "There's a Hyuuga Hinata here to see you."

"Thank you. I'll be right down."

Hinata was sitting in a stiff metal chair against the wall when Sakura reached the lobby. Her hands rested on top of a bento in her lap, and her fingers tugged at the sleeve of her shirt. When she spotted Sakura, she rose to her feet, a brief smile lighting up her face.

"Hinata, how are you?"

She shrugged and looked away. Hinata had never been very difficult to read and the woman currently radiated distress. "I'm sorry to bother you, Sakura, but I wondered if we could have lunch together."

"Of course. I'll grab some food from the cafeteria, and we can head back to my office."

Hinata nodded, visibly relieved that they would have privacy. Sakura held onto her questions until they were settled in her office, the door locked to keep out any unexpected visitors. She pulled out a chair from behind the desk of one of the other Junior Head Medics and set it beside hers.

Hinata unwrapped her bento, and Sakura noted with amusement that Naruto had prepared it. There was a pile of noodles and condiments on one side with eggs, a slice of broiled salmon and two onigiri shoved into the remaining space. It had been crudely put together, prepared with about as much care as one might expect from Naruto.

Hinata must have caught her expression because she smiled and said, "It looks messy, but it's actually quite good. Naruto dropped it off for me earlier while I was training with my team."

"That was thoughtful of him," Sakura said. She had never quite been certain whether Naruto would be an incredibly considerate husband... or an incredibly obtuse one. Possibly he was both. But she had never doubted that he would treat Hinata well.

Hinata's brows were furrowed as she ate, and Sakura quickly finished her own tray of cafeteria food before easing into conversation.

"How is your team? Will you be nominating them for the next chuunin exams?"

Hinata shook her head. "One of them might be ready... He's a quick learner and he's already proven capable of handling himself on our missions. But he's stubborn and still needs to learn to rely on his teammates for help. The other two are good, but I don't think they're at the right level to take the exam yet."

She was rambling, and Sakura let her. It would make her more comfortable when she broached whatever topic it was she'd come to talk about.

"Maybe I can get us a B-rank mission next year to prepare them a bit more." She set down her chopsticks and sighed. "Naruto loves to hear about them. I think he wants his own team soon."

The thought of Naruto teaching his own team was vaguely alarming. But she refrained from saying so.

"I..." Hinata wrung her hands in her lap before meeting Sakura's eyes. "I've been concerned about Naruto. Have you noticed anything strange about him lately?"

Sakura shook her head. "I haven't seen him since last week, while you were away on your mission. But he and Sasuke had been fighting so he wasn't in his best mood. Don't tell me they're still mad at each other?" She had expected the tension to blow over by midweek. Sasuke was renowned for holding a grudge, but Naruto usually let it go within days.

"It's not that he's been in a bad mood," Hinata said. "He's been... very attentive. Not that he isn't normally, but he's been doing all the chores and the grocery shopping and... and now we have a year's worth of ramen stocked up." She shook her head. "He's also been trying to help me cook and spending his evenings at home instead of going out with Sai or Sasuke. I don't think he's even spoken to Sasuke all week."

Sakura pursed her lips, frowning. "Well, they _are_ both ridiculously stubborn. One of them probably made a stupid mistake on the mission and pissed the other one off. They get so fired up about things."

Hinata nodded and her gaze slid away, uncertainty still evident in the tense lines of her face. "I love that he's being so considerate and... and trying so hard. He always tries hard. But I've caught him several times just... staring at nothing and..." Hinata crossed her arms and hunched her shoulders, drawing into herself. "He gets this _look_ in his eyes that's... _dark_ a-and angry and... it's just not him."

Sakura could see she was working herself into a fine mess of anxiety and slipped her arm around Hinata's shoulders. Sakura had seen Naruto with that same look a time or two so she wasn't nearly as concerned. But it did beg the question of what exactly he was brooding about.

"Naruto will be fine," Sakura said, injecting as much conviction into her voice as possible to reassure the woman. "He always bounces back. You know that. In another couple days, he'll probably give in and go talk to Sasuke and everything will be fine again."

Hinata bit her lip, looking less than convinced, but she smiled anyway. "I know. Naruto's always moody when he's not getting along with Sasuke." She shook her head and took Sakura's hand in hers. "Thank you, Sakura. I appreciate you taking time to talk with me."

Sakura squeezed her hand before helping her pack up her bento. "I'm always open to talk. And not just about Naruto either," she said.

She had mulled over Naruto's agitation when she'd spoken to him last and, while he'd been noticeably more withdrawn than usual, she'd held onto the expectation that the two would work things out themselves like they usually did. Sakura liked to think that she knew him well, but if Hinata, his wife who spent nearly every day with him, felt something was amiss then perhaps she was right.

"Since they expect it of me anyway, I'll do some snooping and see if I can figure out what they're fighting about."

Hinata seemed to have been waiting for this, because she finally relaxed her brow and released a soft breath of relief. "Thank you. Naruto never wants to talk to me about what bothers him because he doesn't like me to worry. And I could never approach Sasuke because... well..."

Sakura laughed. "Yeah, Sasuke's not easy to talk to. Well, I'm sure they're just being stubborn. It wouldn't be the first time."

Sakura walked her back down to the lobby and made a mental note to catch Saizo after class on Monday. She'd have to do some reconnaissance if she expected to find out anything useful. Sasuke was perpetually tight-lipped about anything not having to do with his work or his children, and Naruto would try to play it off (badly) with a smile and a poor joke.

oOo

Sakura decided that the best time to catch Sasuke alone was when he left to train in the village-designated areas. Unfortunately, his training schedule was almost never routine, especially now that he and Naruto weren't on speaking or sparring terms. Since she still had her own duties to perform as well and couldn't monitor Sasuke's comings and goings, she set about recruiting Saizo as an unwitting spy.

"...wouldn't it be easier if you just told him you wanted to talk to him in private?" Saizo was eyeing her uncertainly, fingers tugging at the strings of his hoodie.

Sakura wished, for once, that the boy wasn't so astute. "Well, yes but your father tends to avoid me when he thinks I'm being nosy, and he'd probably make up some absurd excuse to keep me at a distance."

Saizo frowned, his eyebrows bunching up as he contemplated this. "But... Dad always says it's nobody else's business what we do and that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks. And that..." He blushed a bit, looking apologetic. "...we should tell people who are nosy to mind their own business."

Sakura's hands fisted in her lap and her smile grew strained. Saizo took a step backward, eyes widening. She held onto her receding patience and cleared her throat. After all, it wasn't Saizo she was annoyed with. It was his idiot father who still insisted on having juvenile stand offs with his equally idiotic friend.

"Saizo-kun, you know I respect your father's privacy. I just need to talk to him about some things. And you have to agree that I'm not just anybody. I have a right to be nosy." The classroom had cleared and she was due at the hospital in fifteen minutes. Kosuke was probably waiting outside for him and would come looking for him soon.

Saizo immediately nodded. "Mom says you and Naruto are like family."

Sakura smiled, heartened by the admission, even if it hadn't come from Sasuke. "Then you'll help me, right? All I want to know is when he leaves the house by himself. It's a small favor."

Saizo bit his lip.

"If your father gets upset with me, I promise I won't say anything about you."

This seemed to mollify him because he finally shrugged his small shoulders and nodded. "Okay. You'll be at the hospital, right?"

Sakura beamed. She patted his head before standing from her desk. "Yes, thank you, Saizo-kun. I really appreciate it."

She gathered up her things, shoving piles of papers into folders, while he watched in silent bemusement; then she ushered him out of the classroom with another quick word of thanks.

She exchanged a brief greeting with Kosuke before rushing home to change. Another reason to be grateful she lived in such close proximity to the hospital—she would have never made it in time for her afternoon shifts. She spared a minute to water her wilting plants—if she didn't keep them green, she'd never hear the end of it from Ino. Then she gathered her hair into a loose ponytail as she slipped into her shoes and was back out the door.

Her shift was no busier than usual, and when she sat down for a break, Lee stopped in with a fresh bouquet of flowers that had all the female medics sighing with envy.

The rest of the week was quiet, with no communication from either Naruto or Sasuke. During her Saturday morning shift, she was called down to the lobby where Saizo had arrived to see her. According to him, Sasuke had left only half an hour ago to train alone. Sakura thanked him and sent him on his way, before asking the nurses on duty to cover for her while she ran out on an errand.

Ten minutes later, she was standing at the crown of a tree, just near the edge of the training grounds.

Sakura crouched, hands dusting the branch at her feet to steady herself. She tilted her head, her eyes falling shut as she strained with ears and senses for that thus far elusive strand of chakra. It occurred to her that Sasuke might have lied to Saizo, and he wasn't there at all, in which case she'd be back to square one. It was reflex for jounin to suppress their chakra at all times, which made it nearly impossible to track them by anything other than scent unless they actually used their chakra.

There was a virtual web of chakra flitting through the training grounds, from numerous sources further off in other sections. None of them were Sasuke. She reached up and pulled herself onto a higher branch. The leaves rustled, a few shaking loose and floating down to dust her shoulders.

There was a sudden reverberation to her left. It appeared Sasuke _was_ there after all and, by the magnitude of the chakra used, he had just performed a jutsu. Relieved, she jumped from the branch. She landed on the next limb over, picking her way through the trees towards the fluctuating chakra.

A thunderous crack rent the air. Sakura paused. The sound was followed by the rumbling groan of a tree falling. She sighed. Sasuke was probably not in the best of moods for a confrontation, even a well-intentioned one, if he was deforesting a segment of Konoha's training zones. She straightened her shoulders and continued moving forward. She would monitor him for a while before determining if it was best to leave him be or engage.

She darted another few yards forward before she felt the frenzied burst of Naruto's chakra. It jerked her to a stop. Her fingers clenched against the bark, the rough edges biting into her skin. Why hadn't she felt Naruto's chakra sooner? It didn't seem likely that he would take Sasuke's attacks without defending himself.

She was close enough now that the air snapped with their chakra. She slid onto a lower-hanging branch, debating whether to alert them of her presence or to remain hidden. She was being offered a choice opportunity—to observe and _finally_ discover what kind of nonsense they fought about. That they were together now surely meant they had gotten over themselves and were reconciling through their odd and typically violent means.

The branches below her flared orange, casting Sakura and the canopy into vivid and luminous relief. She gasped and ducked behind the tree trunk. She hadn't realized how close she was. She clamped down on her chakra, drawing it in like a precisely reeled net. She'd always had the best chakra control of the three of them, and she'd made a career of perfecting it.

Naruto's voice floated up through the branches, indistinct and barely audible. Beating back the little voice that protested her subterfuge, she climbed down the length of the tree. She dropped into the bushes and sank onto her stomach, the dry shifting of the earth against her skin and the rustle of the foliage swallowed by Naruto's angry shout.

"...your fucking fault I can't stop—" Naruto's voice cracked, his breath ragged and edged in panic.

Sakura sucked in a sharp breath. She couldn't imagine what might have happened for Naruto to sound that way.

There was the sharp crack of a fist meeting skin and then the heavy slump of a body falling. The ensuing silence was frightening.

Sakura swallowed, her throat tight. Perhaps this wasn't a typical confrontation, she thought. Naruto rarely let an issue fester between them for more than a couple days and Hinata had said herself that Naruto's behavior had been off since he returned from that mission. Sakura bit her lip, remembering Naruto's eyes, that blinding blue that had haunted her for days.

She held her breath, hands clenching against the soft dirt. She shouldn't have been there—she had never been privy to Naruto's or Sasuke's most vulnerable moments; they reserved those moments for each other, and she'd gotten used to the bitter sting of her exclusion. She glanced behind her, deliberating an escape.

She started, biting down on the inside of her cheek to stifle a gasp when Naruto suddenly stumbled into view, followed by Sasuke. She flattened herself against the earth, twigs and dry leaves digging into her forearms and shins.

There was a streak of blood across Naruto's cheek, dissecting the three whisker-like marks. The hem of his pants was smoking. A dark bruise was forming across Sasuke's jaw while a gash in his forearm bled sluggishly, bright red veins threading down to drip from his fingers. Dirt matted his side and blades of grass were strewn through his mussed hair. He reached out and grasped Naruto's shoulders, shaking him.

"Stop bitching at me for one fucking minute and—" Sasuke said before Naruto shoved him away, Naruto's movement stilted as if fighting against his own limbs.

"No, just... just shut up and leave me alone. I want—I want to erase it from my memory. Forget it ever happened." Naruto covered his face, fingers digging into his scalp in frustration. He squeezed his eyes shut as Sasuke watched in tight-lipped silence.

Sakura sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down. She wished they'd move on, take their fight further away so that she didn't have to watch them come apart at the seams. The situation was sudden and terrifying, like that suspended moment of impending and inevitable change that Sakura had felt all those years ago, watching them rip into each other on top of the hospital. The feeling gripped her, echoed in the slump of Naruto's shoulders and the cold _fury_ in Sasuke's face.

"I'm not the only one at fault, Naruto. You damn well knew what you were doing."

"I was _wrong_!" Naruto's voice was hoarse, thick with remorse. "Why can't you just _forget it_?"

"Because it happened, and you can't pretend otherwise." Sasuke's voice was steady, but his hands trembled at his sides. He stood so stiffly that, Sakura thought insanely, another punch from Naruto would break him.

"I can damn well try," Naruto said. He turned, but only took half a step before Sasuke yanked him back.

"We're not finished yet," Sasuke said; there was a frantic quality to his voice that Sakura didn't understand.

He lunged forward, expression fierce. Sakura didn't know what to expect, but Sasuke's mouth landing squarely on Naruto's certainly wasn't it.

She reared back, her hold on her chakra slipping for just a moment before reflex had her grasping for control again. She was paralyzed, struck dumb as she watched Naruto's expression crumble and Sasuke's hands cling with possessive tenacity to Naruto's arms.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: Tinder  
**Rated**: R  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu (also NarutoxHinata, SasukexOC, and LeexSakura)  
**Warnings**: Adultery.  
**Comments**: Canon compliant up to ch 364, and deviates immediately after the Sasuke and Deidara fight.

**Note:** Ryuusei-illusion drew some amazing fanart for this chapter here: http : / / fav . me / d1v209h (remove spaces) It's amazing; please take a moment to look.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates.

..

..

**Chapter 3**

At Naruto's wedding reception, Sasuke and Sakura had kidnapped Naruto from the overbearing horde of Hyuuga relations and found a quiet table in the corner to steal a moment of peace. Naruto had laughed in exhilarated tension, and Sasuke had placed a hand on his shoulder, a smile curving his mouth. Naruto had returned the gesture, meeting Sasuke's gaze, and in that moment, Sakura had been struck by the intimacy of such an unguarded look.

That look had stayed with her for months afterward, and it was reflected now—in Sasuke's white-knuckled grip, in the desperate slant of his mouth over Naruto's, in the way Naruto's brows knit and his body strained forward even as his hands jerked Sasuke away.

"_Stop_," Naruto said, voice thin, holding Sasuke at arm's length.

Every instinct Sakura had was screaming at her to look away.

Naruto turned his face from Sakura's view but whatever emotion he'd given away made Sasuke snarl in disgust. He shoved at Naruto's hand, jaw tight with anger. The pain in his eyes cut through her, swift and sharp and then just as quickly hidden.

Instead of letting go, Naruto's hands tightened on his shirt. Sasuke's surprise was fleeting. He met Naruto's kiss with a low growl. Sakura clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from making any sounds. Hands were suddenly tugging at clothing and then they were falling, the leaves rustling loudly beneath them, broken shafts of sunlight illuminating bare skin and grasping limbs.

Sakura squeezed her eyes shut, the darkness doing nothing to silence their broken moans, their shallow breaths threaded with a frenetic desperation. A bird called overhead, a somber reminder that they weren't completely secluded. They were still on public grounds; anyone could come along and see them. She dropped her head to the ground, the dirt cool against her forehead.

_This isn't happening. Oh god, this isn't happening._ Sakura pressed herself into the earth, wishing beyond anything that it would open up and suffocate her so that she wouldn't have to bear witness to their... their adultery.

Sasuke grunted softly. Naruto's pants were muffled, as if his mouth was pressed against something. She'd never heard them sound that way, lost in something completely outside the realm of her experience. It was disarming and shocking and Sakura wanted _so badly_ to be furious with them.

"Sasuke," Naruto gasped.

At the sound of his voice, she popped her head up. Her breath caught, a tiny strangled sound escaping her before she slapped her hand back over her mouth.

The leaves obstructed her view but not enough that she couldn't see Naruto on his back, Sasuke bent over him. His legs were wrapped around Sasuke's hips, thighs flexing as they tightened around him. The muscles in Sasuke's buttocks clenched as they jerked forward in a frantic pace. Sasuke was turned away from her, but Naruto pressed his mouth against Sasuke's neck, the fall of Sasuke's hair shielding his expression.

His fingers dug bruises into Sasuke's back. Sakura felt her eyes sting. She had to get away, but they were too close. They'd hear her if she tried to move.

Sasuke's hand trailed down the curve of Naruto's hip, the blood from his wound leaving a red streak across the tan skin. His fingers clenched in the corded muscle of Naruto's thigh before he pushed himself up for better leverage. Naruto threw his head back, groaning throatily. His eyes were screwed shut, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

Hinata's worried words repeated in Sakura's mind, and she felt the first bead of anger well inside her. How could they betray the lives they'd so painstakingly built for themselves, the people who'd suffered and endured alongside them? Sakura let the indignation swell before her gaze fell again on Naruto.

His brows were drawn, and he stared up into the twining branches, looking lost even as his mouth opened on soft gasps. Then he turned, gaze latching onto whatever emotion he had caught on Sasuke's face, and his expression twisted into such acute longing that Sakura half expected to see wet streaks through the blood on his cheek.

But his eyes remained dry as he clung to Sasuke. Sasuke's pace grew broken and frenzied. Sakura could feel her anger splinter and fall apart. They understood perfectly what they were doing and every repercussion that would follow.

Sasuke groaned and shuddered. His toes curled into the thin blades of grass; dirt clung to his knees. His hands found purchase in the thick mop of Naruto's hair, holding on as Naruto trembled and arched beneath him with a soft cry. His lips sought and found Naruto's.

A thousand questions erupted in Sakura's mind, each fighting for dominance. _How had this happened_ and _why now_ and _had they always felt this way_? Naruto was so happy with Hinata and Sasuke had a family and... Sakura felt overwhelmed.

She buried her face in her hands and waited, listening to the shift of cloth over skin as they dressed. It had happened so quickly, she wondered if Naruto and Sasuke felt just as shell-shocked. She looked up when she became aware of the tense silence.

They were both sitting, fully clothed, a full five feet of distance between them. Naruto was slumped over his crossed legs, staring with hollow eyes at some indistinguishable spot on the forest floor. Sasuke was watching him, the fall of his bangs doing little to hide his expression. She had never seen him look at Kosuke that way.

"I hate you," Naruto said. His voice was hoarse.

Sakura flinched, hearing instead the emotion thickly delivered to mean something entirely different.

"What are we going to do?" Naruto whispered. Sasuke's jaw tightened. "I love Hinata."

Sasuke acknowledged this with a nod but nothing else. He stood, crossed the distance between them, and dropped back down at Naruto's side. Naruto turned away, brows knitting in a failed attempt to suppress the weakness Sasuke seemed to wring so easily from him. They didn't touch, merely sat in close company with the weight of everything unspoken filling up the space between them.

"Do you love Kosuke?"

Sakura waited, breath held. Sasuke's expression had grown shuttered. He plucked at the grass before catching himself in the inane motions and forcing his hand to still. Neither Sasuke nor Kosuke had ever spoken of their time together before he had brought her to the village and bargained for his place in Konoha.

Finally, Sasuke said, "I married her out of duty to my clan, not love. Kosuke understands."

Something twisted in her chest, beating hard and fast against her ribs. The way he spoke her name belied his casual statement. There was deep affection there, if not love. Kosuke was his wife of eight years and the mother of his children. Affection had been unavoidable. Did Sasuke even know how to love that way?

She thought about the way he'd looked at Naruto. _Yes_, she thought. He did.

Naruto opened his mouth to speak, and then paused, expression clouded, before shaking his head. He pushed to his feet, unsteady hands dusting off his clothes and running through hopelessly tangled hair.

Sasuke's gaze followed him, something fierce and possessive flashing in his eyes. Then he stood as well. "I have to go. I promised Mikoto I'd work on her aim with her."

Panic flared in Naruto's face at the mention of Sasuke's kids, before his eyelids fluttered shut and he swallowed. He passed a hand over his face, fingers trembling, and took a deep breath. Sasuke turned, his footsteps carrying him away and out of Sakura's field of vision.

Sakura didn't dare move yet. Naruto was still standing there, smudged in dirt and blood and looking terribly young. His hands dropped to his sides and he tilted his head back. After a long moment, he sighed and turned, blurring into the foliage.

Sakura released a breath of air and dropped her head onto the cushion of her arm. Slowly, she pushed to her feet on shaking legs, reaching out to steady herself against the tree trunk. Then she glanced behind her, winced as her gaze passed over the spot where they'd lain, and walked away.

oOo

"Did you get a chance to talk to Dad?"

The pencil snapped in Sakura's hand. "Uh... no, I didn't, but it's fine—I'll just catch him sometime later." She tossed the pencil ends into the trash bin behind her chair and opened her desk drawer to retrieve a new one.

Saizo was watching her with a slight tilt of his brow, expression curious in that way children sometimes ought not to be. "But you said it was important."

"And it is," she said with a nod. She smiled to soften her words. "But you don't need to worry about it. I'm sorry I got you involved."

His lips twisted into a moue. "Are you sure—?"

"Saizo, you shouldn't keep your mother waiting." She patted his head to let him know she wasn't upset with him before gently shooing him off. He frowned, disgruntled at being dismissed, before bidding her a farewell and turning to leave.

Sakura sighed and gave up her pretense of grading. She cupped her head, fingers rubbing small circles against her temples.

She'd gone home immediately after leaving the training grounds on Saturday, unable to return to work. To make up for it, she'd worked a double shift on Sunday, which had allowed her to focus on healing and not on her two teammates.

She'd barely slept in the past forty eight hours and she would have taken a personal day off to collect her bearings (which, as it were, still lay scattered throughout the northernmost region of training sector six), but the thought of begging off work when she could still function had rebelled against her sense of duty. So she'd dragged herself to the Academy Monday morning only to be faced with Sasuke's son, whom she'd had difficulty looking in the eye all day.

Straightening her shoulders, she sorted her papers, slipping various stacks into corresponding cabinet files. She wasn't expected at the hospital so she had hoped to spend her afternoon adjusting her lesson plans for the next couple weeks. As it was, her attempt to distract herself had been short-lived.

Naruto and Sasuke weren't just her teammates, they were her family, her _brothers_. She couldn't betray them to their wives. But she also couldn't just stand by and watch them destroy the lives they'd built for themselves either. If nothing else, she at least had to talk to them.

oOo

Wednesday afternoons, Hinata took her team to run drills along Konoha's eastern wall. Sakura left the school immediately after classes ended, hoping to catch Naruto alone before he left to train. She bypassed the roads, flitting across the rooftops and arriving at his doorstep just as Naruto was stepping out.

He started, falling back a step at her sudden appearance. "Sakura-chan," he said, surprised, before recovering himself and slapping on a broad, painfully false grin.

"Naruto, uh, can I come in?" She wiped sweaty palms against her skirt and, before Naruto could refuse her, slipped past him into the house. She glanced back to see his shoulders slump before he wheeled around, his smile a skewed fixture on his face.

He shut the door behind him as she seated herself at their small table. Reaching out, she traced her index finger down the curved petal of one the wildflowers that sat as a centerpiece. Naruto bustled around, heating up the pot of tea Hinata had likely made that morning.

"So... how've you been?" he asked. He set a cup before her and dropped into the next chair over.

"I've been fine—the hospital is always busy and the kids at the Academy haven't killed me yet," she said. She attempted to laugh but it fell short and hovered uncomfortably in the still kitchen. "Um... so we haven't had our dinner meetings for a while now. Think we can do it this Sunday?"

He looked up, expression pained. "I'm not sure, I... things have been kind of busy, and Hinata wanted me to help with her team to kind of prepare if I wanted one myself..."

Sakura listened to him ramble for a few moments more, her lip caught between her teeth. Her hand curled around her cup, the warmth seeping into her palm and giving her the temporary strength to blurt out, "Naruto, I know."

He stopped mid-prattle and flushed a bit, rubbing his neck sheepishly. "Yeah I know, I've been going on about wanting my own team for a while now, I didn't mean to—"

She shook her head, her hand tightening around the fragile china. Her eyes fell on the photo of Naruto and Sasuke on the wall and the small bit of happiness captured there.

"That's not... I meant I _know_."

He arched an eyebrow, expression shifting into confusion, blue eyes narrowing. "Know what?"

She swallowed past the knot rising to choke her voice and said, "I know about you and Sasuke."

His eyes widened. and his face grew ashen. He drew back, lips moving without words. She released her cup and reached out to grasp his hand but he drew away and jumped to his feet. He turned his back to her, fists trembling at his sides.

"Sakura-chan, you don't know what you're talking about," he said, voice quiet, eerily controlled despite that his body language had already betrayed him.

"I saw you." She turned away so she wouldn't have to see any more than the way Naruto's body went rigid, shoulders seizing in panic or anger, she had no idea which.

"When?" The word was forced, as if he had to struggle to speak.

Her mouth fell open, slack with surprise. Her hands gripped the edge of the table so tightly that it groaned, threatening to crack. It hadn't occurred to her that what she'd seen might have happened more than that once since they'd returned from their mission.

"I... I saw Sasuke kiss you," she said, heat rising in her cheeks. It was a vague response, but telling him exactly where she'd seen them would only lead to more awkwardness.

He swallowed audibly, shoulders shaking, before he seemed to collapse on himself. He sank to his knees, head bowed, fingernails digging into the hardwood floors. Sakura's chair wobbled on its hind legs as she shot from her seat. She knelt at his side and laid a tentative hand on the curve of his back.

"I don't know what to do," he said, voice hoarse. "I love her, Sakura-chan, _I love her_. Why am I...? I can't..."

She frowned in helpless frustration. She rested her forehead against his shoulder, unable to do anything but rub small circles into his back as he struggled with himself. Naruto was a stranger to betrayal, and she could only imagine the self-reproach he was feeling. Her throat tightened and she swallowed quickly before her own emotions could give way.

He drew a deep breath, then sniffled loudly before muttering, "Stop it, Uzumaki." Despite the situation, his quiet words wrung a small smile from her. At every dip in their lives, first as teenagers and then as adults, Sakura had learned to hold onto her resolve by watching Naruto rise above every obstacle—and they had been manifold—placed in his path.

He had become her rock, a solid if somewhat haphazard presence in her life, and a source of fortitude when she felt it lacking. Seeing him fall apart hurt, the pain immediate and raw, and the thought of Naruto being unable to overcome this... it was a frightening prospect.

He pushed himself to his feet, and she moved away to allow him to rise on his own means. She sank back into the chair, brow furrowed, and folded her hands in her lap to keep from reaching out to him. Her gaze traced the edge of sunlight that cut across the table and highlighted a corner of Hinata's floral arrangement, the promise of a slow decay balanced on each fragile tip.

"Hinata gave me something I've always wanted."

Naruto's voice was loud in the utter silence and she started. He had yet to face her but she didn't begrudge him that weakness.

"You and... Sasuke—you're my family too but... but Hinata gave me a _family_," he said, his hand lifting to clutch at his chest, as if trying to hold together what was already unraveling.

She dropped her eyes back to her lap. Hinata had chosen him of her own free will, not because she'd been assigned to him based on evaluation scores. It didn't mean that she or Sasuke cared for him any less... but it did mean _something_--floating castles, shining knights and happily ever afters, those obscure tales she'd been read as a child that had fit within a ninja's life the way a square shaped block fit in a circular slot.

He finally turned and slumped into the seat opposite her. She lifted a hand and placed it over his, encouraged when he didn't flinch away.

"Have..." She cleared her throat. "Have you always... felt that way? About Sasuke?"

He stiffened again and began to pull away, but her hand tightened around his. He frowned and a muscle twitched in his cheek as he clenched his teeth. He could break her grip if he tried, but she knew he wouldn't deliberately hurt her by doing so. It had been a foolish question to ask, but one she wanted to know so long as the affair was out between them.

"You know you can trust me." She paused before asking, "Do you love him?"

His gaze lowered, tawny lashes shielding drawn eyes. He licked his lips before saying, "I've always loved him. But I wasn't _in_ love with him. Sasuke is... _was_ like my brother." He shook his head. "It's hard to separate now when things changed or... or if I've always felt like this and just didn't know it." He snorted, a small sound of derision.

That peculiar moment that he and Sasuke had shared at his wedding came to mind and, her gaze suddenly caught by the array of photos on the wall--most of them of Naruto and Sasuke as they'd progressed through the years--Sakura felt certain that the threadwork had been long in the making.

She would be lying if she said she didn't envy them their closeness. Sasuke had not transitioned into marriage and fatherhood well. The first couple years he had been moody and brusque, frustrated with his uncertainty about how to deal with a wife and infant. He couldn't approach his marital disputes with the killing intent he would have as a ninja. His communication skills had been absent at best and he had never been good at compromise. He would probably deny it now, but he had spent long hours in Naruto's company because Naruto had been the only one capable of calming him down—or at least diverting his frustration and energy on half-hearted brawls.

But once Saizo was old enough to trail after him, Sasuke had taken his role by the reins and settled into being a father. Naruto had been there with him through it.

Sakura sighed and squeezed his hand before releasing it. It was a fine mess they'd wrought.

There was a sound at the door and Naruto's red-rimmed eyes widened before he abruptly vanished in a tuft of smoke. Sakura pushed to her feet just as the front door opened.

"Hinata, welcome home," she said. She pasted on a bright smile and injected as much cheer as possible into her voice. As sweet as Hinata appeared, she was still the Hyuuga heir and capable of distinguishing a bold-faced lie.

"Sakura, how are you?" Hinata smiled as she bent over to remove her weapons pouch from around her right thigh.

"I'm well. I was just stopping in to see Naruto. He had to...go...do something," Sakura said, mentally kicking herself for sounding so obvious. "I was just leaving." She moved to step past Hinata.

"Wait," Hinata said, straightening. She twisted her fingers together at her waist and glanced further into the house. "Um... about what we talked about the other day."

Sakura felt her stomach knot and she inhaled slowly through her nose, filling her lungs with air and resolve. The last thing she'd wanted was to become an accomplice, but betraying Naruto was an impossible alternative.

Squaring her shoulders, she said evenly, "Naruto and Sasuke are just having a bigger fight than usual—they're such children sometimes. I expect things will be back to normal soon. I'll talk to Sasuke tomorrow about it." She grinned, hoping Hinata wouldn't notice how tightly she was clenching her jaw.

Hinata blinked at her, eyes pale and unreadable. "I see. Thank you, Sakura."

Sakura nodded and just barely refrained from ducking her head in shame before she cleared the front door.

oOo

Lee possessed the ability to completely steal her attention, and Sakura was grateful for it.

He had dressed in a neutral gray sweater and loose blue jeans, both of which had been bought for him by Tenten. Sakura had grown used to his startlingly green outfit, but admitted it was nice to see him in civilian clothing. The small bouquet of irises he'd met her with sat at the edge of the table where its leaves curled into the coiling designs of the tablecloth. The waiter had come and gone and, as they waited for their meals, Sakura found herself at ease for the first time in days.

"Tenten hasn't been able to stop talking about her big mission next week. She anticipates being away for at least three months, if not more," Lee said. He sat straight-backed, which forced Sakura to self-consciously adjust her own posture.

"She's been on a lot of extended missions lately."

"She's Konoha's leading weapons expert. Her knowledge and abilities are vital," Lee said with a proud nod.

Sakura smiled. Lee never spoke ill of his former teammates. The waiter arrived with their entrees and they waited until he'd left again to continue.

"Neji has been very busy as well. In fact, Tenten and I suspect he's seeing someone although he hasn't said anything yet. He doesn't speak much about his personal life, which is understandable."

She hitched an eyebrow, curiosity perked. Neji was always so aloof and reserved, although she supposed a determined woman would be willing to work past those obstacles in lieu of his indisputable good looks. It reminded her not a little of how she'd viewed Sasuke in their youth.

Lee began to say more, before he appeared to change his mind and went back to talking about Tenten. Sakura understood his reticence. Neji was officially listed as a jounin, but those who knew the man easily recognized him as one of the ANBU guards often seen patrolling the village perimeter. It was difficult to mistake the graceful sweep of his hair or his precise, fluid movements.

It also hadn't escaped her notice the few times she'd been in his company with Naruto or Sasuke in tow, that while Naruto treated him with as much deference as he did the rest of the village, Sasuke tended to adopt Neji's stiffly polite demeanor. Neji's unspoken status hung between them like a veil, a sultry kind of discomfort and not entirely unwarranted reminder that, to Sakura, seemed to whisper, 'This is—I am—what you could have been, but will never be.'

Sasuke would never be ANBU because of his stint in Sound, and it was an old wound that she had long since learned she couldn't heal.

"How are Naruto and Sasuke? I haven't seen them at their usual training spot lately. And Sasuke's son, Saizo—how is he doing in class?"

She flushed a bit, feeling sheepish that he had to ask. Their conversation had thus far been Lee talking at her, and she wasn't typically so close-mouthed. "Um, Naruto and Hinata are doing fine. I was hoping they'd be planning for children soon, but I guess neither of them are ready yet." While she'd been disappointed at first, now she was merely relieved that the issue of children would not be another obstacle in whatever course Naruto was taking with his marriage.

Lee gave an enthusiastic nod, his hair falling across his brow. She smiled and reached out to gently tuck it back into place. Her smile broke into a laugh when his ears turned pink. It was endearing how flustered he still became from her casual touches, especially considering they'd done a bit more than casual touching behind closed doors.

"I went to see Sasuke last weekend. His children are growing so quickly," she said. "Saizo will be ready to graduate in a year, if not less. And Mikoto will be starting her first year soon. Oh, you should see Saizo's chakra control—it's amazing. He's already mastered several basic medical techniques."

Swallowing around his food, Lee coughed a bit before saying, "That's very impressive and nothing less of what I'd expect from Sasuke's children. Last year, a child from the Higan clan graduated—I think she was the same age as Saizo is now. I hear her sensei is putting her team into the next chuunin exams."

As expected, Saizo would have to fight to remain at the top. Sakura approved—rivalry among peers was a healthy motivation for improvement... so long as they didn't escalate to the level Naruto's and Sasuke's had reached. Of course, when things grew dire, as they were wont to do, the two had managed to work together in ways that had impressed even Kakashi. Sakura shook her head to dispel the memories.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Saizo made chuunin within a year of making genin."

"Yes, Konoha will continue to prosper with prodigies like Neji and Sasuke," Lee said.

"Not exactly like Neji and Sasuke though," she said. She laughed before she could help herself, and Lee gave her a look of surprise before he too chuckled lightly.

The ensuing silence was comfortable, and Sakura settled into it with practiced ease. His presence had become a soothing alternative to the other men in her life.

"Sakura," Lee said, sounding tentative.

She glanced up from her plate, chopsticks hovering above her rice bowl.

He frowned, concern evident in the tilt of his brows (which, due to their thickness, were fairly good indicators of his mood).

"Are you well?" he asked.

She blinked, unaware and suddenly anxious that she'd been so transparent. "Er... I'm fine. I'm just... a bit tired. It's been a long week."

"Would you rather we leave?" He was already setting down his chopsticks and reaching for his napkin.

"No, no," she said, reaching across the table to still his hands. "It's okay, really. I'm sorry I'm so scattered today."

Lee regarded her for a moment, his mouth pursed in thought. Finally, he nodded. "Please don't apologize; I understand you're always very busy with the Academy and the hospital. I shouldn't have asked you to dinner on such short notice but... I missed you."

His ears turned pink again, but he met her gaze. He'd never been less than exuberant about his feelings for her, but once she'd agreed to date him (and after a peculiar chat with Naruto and Sasuke, the details of which were kept from her), he'd learned to reign in his enthusiasm so as not to overwhelm her.

They'd been dating for a year now, their first dance together at Naruto's wedding reception when Naruto, determined to set Sakura on the path to her own happily ever after, had commanded them to dance with no one but each other (even though Naruto himself had stolen her away from Lee for a few dances in between). By the end of the night, Lee had been stuttering his desire to court her and giving her a lengthy explanation about how he'd been meaning to ask for years, but hadn't wanted to overstep the boundaries he'd eventually learned were in place between friends and comrades.

Sakura had valued Lee as both a dear friend and a close ally. She'd said yes on a whim, touched by his feelings for her that had endured through all the years. Falling in love herself hadn't been wholly expected.

She squeezed his hand, the warmth in her chest sinking to coil in her stomach when he squeezed back. His thumb rubbed small circles across her knuckles. "I missed you too."

His tentative smile curved into a grin and she found herself returning it without conscious permission. Even now, he still seemed to treasure every word of affection she spoke to him as if it were the first.

They finished their meal with amiable conversation before Sakura asked Lee to walk her home. His ears turned pink again at the invitation.

When they reached her apartment, she leaned into him and whispered against his ear, "Want to come in?"

She grinned when she felt his face grow warm against her cheek. Lee rarely dared to make advances until she made it clear she felt the same. Taking his hand, she pulled him into her apartment and locked the door, wondering not for the first time what it would feel like to not have to invite him in, to be able to come home _together_. She'd contemplated asking Lee to move in with her for some time, but hadn't yet gotten the nerve to ask.

She was fortunate, really, to have someone as considerate and loving and _open_ about his feelings as Lee. Considering the current circumstances with Naruto's and Sasuke's relationships, she thought it disheartening that she had envied their marriages.

Hinata loved Naruto, Sakura was certain of this. She wasn't sure about Kosuke, but she knew at least that Kosuke cared very much for Sasuke. But the two men... as much as Sakura liked to believe that they loved their wives, it had always been plain for everyone to see that when they were together, it was like no one else mattered.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: Tinder  
**Rated**: R  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu (also NarutoxHinata, SasukexOC, and LeexSakura)  
**Warnings**: Adultery  
**Comments**: Canon compliant up to ch 364, and deviates immediately after the Sasuke and Deidara fight.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates.

..

..

**Chapter 4**

Watching Saizo spar with his father was a surreal experience. They moved the same way—Sasuke with quick precision born of experience and Saizo with raw enthusiasm, a far less refined echo of his father's abilities. Sakura took a seat on the stairs and waited for them to finish.

Saizo's defense was good, and Sasuke moved at a deliberately slower pace. Still, Sasuke pulled a punch as Saizo stumbled on a turn and raised his arm too late to defend the strike. He regained his footing and crouched again to counterattack, but Sasuke had relaxed his stance.

"You're turning too hard into the swing; just let the momentum carry you," Sasuke said. He patted his son's shoulder with a nod.

Brows knit into a frown, Saizo said, "Let me try it again."

Sasuke shook his head. "Sakura."

Sakura straightened from her recline as Saizo glanced over his shoulder to where Sasuke had directed his gaze. She waved. "Good evening, Saizo-kun. I was hoping to steal a moment with your father."

Sasuke gave his son a light nudge. "Go help your mother with dinner."

Saizo made a face but obeyed, pausing just long enough to greet Sakura before dashing into the house.

"What did you need?" Sasuke said.

She tried not to fidget. "Would you mind walking with me?" She returned his steady regard with an attempt at a placid smile.

After a moment, during which he seemed to sense her unease, he nodded. Flickering, he reappeared perched at the top of the fence. "This way."

She followed him out onto the main road, relieved he'd acquiesced without complaint. Villagers cast them curious glances as they passed. The silence was heavy between them. Sakura watched the way the sunlight seemed to bleach out the imperfections in the weathered buildings and thought about how to broach the topic at hand. She'd envisioned a number of scenarios—many of which included both Sasuke setting her on fire and her being forced to kick his pretty face in. Fortunately, Sasuke didn't typically resort to violence anymore when angered.

She paused at the railing of an old bridge. The paint had faded over the years, and she picked at chipping flakes with nervous fingers.

"Sakura," he said. He rested his hands on the railing. "What's on your mind?" His voice was soft.

"I—I wanted to let you know..." Her voice wavered, and she paused to gather her nerve. Confrontations with Sasuke came with entirely different guidelines than ones with Naruto. "I wanted you to know that I know... about you and Naruto."

She braced herself for a reaction. Several seconds passed, during which Sasuke's silence had grown stifling, and she glanced over. He was watching her with a maddeningly blank expression.

"You're mistaken," he said, and something flashed in his eyes, flinty and hostile and reminiscent of a younger Sasuke.

She swallowed and looked away. Her gaze fixed on a leaf drifting along the surface of the river, its edges brown and curled in decay. Her fingers dug into the railing, the chipped paint crackling. The urge to reach over and shake him was overpowering so she bit down on her tongue until the irrational impulse passed. She didn't want to get into a physical fight with the man—she might be able to shatter his jaw with one blow, but _landing_ that blow was exceptionally difficult.

"I've already talked to Naruto. He confirmed it."

She decided it was wisest to refrain from telling him she'd seen them together—he'd figure it out soon enough. She didn't expect a reply so she continued on, determined to speak her mind while she had the chance.

"I just thought you and Naruto should know that I'm aware. And that... I'm still your teammate and your friend. We've all been together for long enough now that you should know I'd never betray you to your spouses even if I think... well it doesn't really matter what I think. I'm not going to lecture or—or rant, because you're grown men who know exactly what you're doing and what the consequences could be and... and I don't know what's going to happen now—to you and Naruto, to your marriages, to our team—or if things will ever be the same again but..." She paused for breath, feeling the sting behind her eyes again and hating it. "But whatever you and Naruto decide, I'll stand..."

She'd turned to face Sasuke and stiffened to find herself staring at empty air. She glanced around wildly, cheeks flushing with heat as she realized she was alone.

Her hands fisted. She shook with indignation as she stomped off the bridge, visions of maiming Sasuke in her head.

oOo

Sakura avoided Sasuke the rest of the week. She couldn't be certain how she'd react to seeing him and physical assault really wasn't conducive to a civil conversation. On the bright side, Naruto had stopped hiding in his house. They took their lunches together and trained in the evenings after Sakura's hospital shift. She'd missed Naruto's company, but he was suddenly so adamant about spending time with her that she'd literally had to shake him off her limbs to get to work on time.

Friday finally arrived and with it, Sakura's resolve. She had little influence over Naruto and Sasuke's choices but she wasn't about to sit back and watch their team fall apart.

Classes ended and she walked Saizo out to meet his mother. She might not be able to get Sasuke's cooperation but Kosuke surely could.

"Good afternoon, Kosuke." Sakura waved as Saizo took Juzou's hand and continued ahead down the road. "Can I have a word?"

"Of course." Kosuke motioned for Mikoto to follow her brother. "Saizo, wait for your sister." She waited until Saizo had wheeled back around to collect Mikoto before turning to Sakura.

"I was hoping you might convince Sasuke to have dinner this Sunday with me and Naruto. It's been a while since we've had our dinner dates and... well, I'd really like Sasuke to be there."

Kosuke shifted on her feet, expression pensive. "Sasuke has been rather tight-lipped about whatever's going on, and Naruto hasn't visited the children since they got back from that mission. He usually doesn't stay away for this long; the children miss him. I do wish they'd settle whatever dispute they've gotten into."

Sakura felt her stomach twist at Kosuke's innocent remark. Naruto and Sasuke were a long ways from settling _anything_, but she would have to contain her hope and focus on achievable goals—the first being to survive a dinner date. Asking them to attend what had been a weekly routine until recently didn't seem too demanding a request.

She sighed as she watched Saizo walk his siblings further down the road. "Yes, I wish things could go back to normal..."

Kosuke gave her an optimistic smile, which she couldn't find the conviction to return. "I'll make sure Sasuke is there," she said with a decisive nod.

Sakura inclined her head, grateful for her help. "Thank you. Please tell him to meet us at Haruhana at the usual time."

She bid Kosuke farewell and wished she possessed the woman's confidence—she'd need it when she met Naruto for training.

oOo

"Sakura-chan, I... I can't." Naruto pressed a hand to his forehead, fingers curving into the messy fall of his bangs.

Perhaps it'd been a bad idea to ask him immediately. She should have waited until after training, when he was weary from exertion and more pliable to suggestions.

"Naruto, you can't just avoid him forever. Be reasonable about this." She was prepared to give him whatever logic he needed to hear. All she wanted was to put them in the same room together and test the waters. The restaurant she'd chosen was small but located in an area with high traffic during the evening hours. The public setting might deter them from doing anything rash.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

He stepped back on unsteady legs, hands reaching out to steady himself on the wooden post. "I can't just...sit next to him and... _pretend_."

"What would you be pretending?" She crossed her arms. "You're still friends and comrades, and if you can't even sit through a simple dinner, how do you expect to function on a mission?"

Naruto hung his head, shoulders stiff with uncertainty. She could see his indecision waver in the slight pucker of his brow and the uneasy shift of his gaze.

Speaking of missions was neutral territory. Carefully not mentioning spouses or the inevitable calamity that would result from a continued affair was for the sake of _both_ their sanities. She had to stop focusing on the consequences and channel her energy toward any kind of possible repair.

She'd be damned if she let despair take hold.

"Look, Naruto, if... if nothing else, do it for me?" It might have been underhanded to play that particular card, but it was done in his and Sasuke's best interests and she had to keep that in mind.

His resolve visibly crumbled, and her relief twisted her stomach into anxious knots.

"One dinner," he said, turning away so that he was addressing the wood post instead of her. "And then we'll see."

"One dinner," she agreed, smiling. "That's all I ask."

oOo

Sakura released the vise-like grip she'd had on her napkin when Sasuke finally appeared, stepping into the restaurant and scanning the room before locating them. At her side, Naruto's reaction was the opposite. He jerked upright, back stiff and hands clenched at his sides.

Sasuke nodded to her as he approached and pulled out the chair across from Naruto. To his credit, he greeted Naruto with little inflection. "Naruto."

"Sasuke," Naruto said, who seemed to take his cue from Sasuke's nonchalance and relaxed marginally into his seat.

Sakura's pleasure at Sasuke's presence overrode any irritation she still had against him for leaving her hanging the week before. Kosuke had delivered on her word, and Sasuke didn't seem all that inconvenienced by being there. Naruto's unease was palpable, but he'd settle down once he stopped regarding Sasuke like he was a burning explosive tag. She turned to give him an encouraging smile, but his nose was buried in the menu.

She cleared her throat and waited until she'd acquired their attention before speaking. "So... Saizo did very well on his ninjutsu evaluation last week. His scores were well above the average for his age group."

"Saizo is an Uchiha," Sasuke said, as if that alone explained his aptitude.

Sakura let out a mental breath of relief. Saizo was a safe topic then.

Despite his stiff words, she knew he was proud of his son. The tenderness with which he handled his children was proof enough that he'd never taken them or their abilities for granted. Of course, she was just as certain that, given his pride, he did attribute some of Saizo's success to their bloodline.

"How is he doing with healing small cuts?"

"Fine. He's been practicing on my fingers." Amusement twisted his mouth.

"I hope he didn't cut you any deeper than what he could heal."

"He wouldn't leave my hand alone long enough for me to get any work done." He hid the echo of fondness in his words with a frown. She could only smile in response.

"I'll stop by again soon to teach him something new."

"He'd like that."

Silence settled again, and Sakura floundered for something to talk about. They were saved from further strain by the arrival of the waiter. Naruto sank lower in his chair, fingers toying with the puckered creases of the old leather seat cushion. Sasuke watched him, expression unreadable, before lowering his gaze, the screen of his lashes shielding any stray thoughts Sakura might have been able to pick out.

They each ordered in quick succession. Naruto grudgingly handed his menu to the waiter and watched as he tucked it along with Sasuke and Sakura's under his arm and walked away. Left with nothing to hide behind, Naruto squared his shoulders and stared down into the checkered pattern of the tablecloth.

"So have you been thinking about taking on a team?" Sakura asked him.

He glanced at her and shrugged, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth. "I guess... I'd like to. Big responsibility, but nothing the future Hokage can't handle."

Sasuke snorted and Naruto's eyes flickered to him, quick and angry, before looking back at Sakura.

"I'm sure you'll be amazing, Naruto. I mean, look at Kakashi—he didn't seem the sort to be very good, but I think we've all turned out... okay." She cocked her head and wrinkled her nose in thought. "Maybe he's not the best example."

"Kakashi's teaching was fine," Sasuke said.

Sakura looked at him. She suddenly remembered sitting in a stiff stadium seat, hands clenched in her lap, the buzz of spectators fading away into white noise just before a small figure swept into the field and a surge of relief had pushed her to her feet, his name a sigh on her lips. She smiled.

Despite everything that had happened during the chuunin exams and after... and years after... "Kakashi was a good teacher."

Naruto nodded, lost in his own recollections. He turned his head to grin at her. "When he gets back from vacation, we should take him to dinner."

Sakura nodded her agreement. Sasuke gave a noncommittal shrug.

"I glanced at the mission logs the other day," she said, flushing at the admission because she hadn't meant to nose through them; she'd just been cleaning up after Shizune. "There haven't been very many A or B-rank missions lately so it might be a while yet before we get assigned anything new."

Naruto sighed. "I'd rather take a solo mission," he said, voice quiet.

Sakura bit the inside of her lip to keep from reminding him the Hokage rarely let him have solo missions anymore—there were just too many enemies who, over the years, had tried to get to Naruto—or more accurately, Kyuubi. She glanced at Sasuke who was regarding Naruto again with a look of constructed disinterest.

The waiter returned with their entrees, and Naruto dug into his plate with relish. Sakura assumed he was now using a constantly full mouth to avoid having to contribute to conversation, despite that he and Sasuke had yet to directly address each other outside of their initial greetings.

She dragged a piece of beef through the sauce on her plate before saying, "I've been thinking about asking Lee to move in with me."

Naruto's chopsticks clattered against the edge of his plate and Sasuke paused in his chewing, brows narrowed. They both began speaking at once.

"Are you crazy? Lee is—"

"Why would you—"

"—you'll have green spandex in your closet!!"

"—you'd be giving up your privacy and—"

"_Think of your children!_"

Sakura blinked. Sasuke stopped mid-tirade. He hitched an eyebrow.

"Er," Naruto said. He laughed sheepishly. "I meant your _future_ children. Do you really want to condemn them to those genes?!"

Sasuke muttered, "That's true."

Sakura's lips flattened angrily in response.

"T-That is," Naruto said, placating. "I mean... Lee's a great guy and his taijutsu is really amazing—"

"But he is incapable of using chakra," Sasuke said. Naruto nodded vigorously in agreement. Sakura felt herself flush with both pleasure and irritation that, at least in this, the two had returned to their normal selves.

"I said I'm thinking about asking him to move in with me, not _marry_ me. Geez," she said. She rubbed her forehead in exasperation as the two began speaking again and hid her smile behind her hand.

oOo

"Um... I guess this is good night."

The three of them stood at an intersection just down the street from the restaurant. Naruto was standing with his fists shoved deep into his pockets, expression indiscernible in the darkness. Sasuke stood several feet away, arms loose at his sides. Naruto coughed as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Sasuke nodded at Naruto's words before turning away to glance down the narrow road. Neither of them seemed inclined to move and, a moment later, Sakura felt something twist in her gut as she realized why. They were waiting for her to leave first.

Her jaw tightened. She nodded to each of them in turn. "Good night, Sasuke. Naruto."

She glanced behind as she walked away, their still figures silhouetted by the far off street lamps. She waited until she'd turned the corner before jumping up onto the next building and doubling back. The night had been, for all intents, a success. Hoping they could resolve their colossal mess in one evening was stretching even _her_ optimism, but if they could speak about it civilly... Well, it was a step in the right direction.

She ducked behind a sloped roof, her fingers catching the tiles for solid purchase. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she peered down into the street. They were still standing there—Naruto was scratching at his stomach, shoulders bunched, and Sasuke was staring off at some distant point to his left. Naruto sighed before he jerked his head in the general direction of his house.

Without words, the two men set off down the street, and Sakura followed across the rooftops, frowning at their continued silence. Sasuke turned his head and said something, too low for Sakura to hear. Naruto responded with a scowl. His lips formed the words, 'I don't know. But she'll let us figure things...'

The light of a nearby lamppost faded as they passed and his face was cast in shadow, but it had already dawned that they were talking about her. She bristled a bit, offended that they—or at least Sasuke—might be questioning her loyalty to them. Sasuke said something else she couldn't hear or lip-read before they lapsed into silence again. A tile groaned beneath her feet and she winced before ducking behind the thick column of a chimney.

Several moments passed in tense silence before she released the breath she'd been holding and rose to view the street below. Naruto and Sasuke were still walking, probably having attributed the sound to a stray cat or something equally inane, if they'd heard it at all. They turned left at the next corner. The shops lining the streets gave way to small houses with generous stretches of land between properties. Naruto's house was far enough from the bustle of the village to be remote—or as remote as a house could be within a walled village.

It was understandable then—not rational nor appropriate, but certainly understandable—that Sasuke seemed to feel safe in tugging Naruto around and planting a kiss on his lips. Something twisted in her chest, and she quelled a gasp before it could escape.

Naruto's eyes grew large before he pushed at Sasuke's shoulders and staggered away. "Don't do that."

Sasuke shifted, feet planted, as if preparing for a fight. "Why did you bring me here?"

Naruto looked away as he climbed the stairs to his door and turned a guilty look down at the flowers Hinata had planted all along the front path.

Hinata was away on a mission with her team; Sakura had spoken to her before she left.

"I don't know. To talk. Privately." He gave a helpless shrug. "I guess."

"You guess," Sasuke said.

The disbelief in his voice mirrored Sakura's thoughts. She was crouched low in a ditch off the side of the road, hidden behind a row of trimmed bushes. How did she keep getting herself into these situations?

Naruto shook his head and raised an arm, pressing his fingertips against his bottom lip. "Maybe we shouldn't be alone together." Naruto hunched his shoulders and hid his eyes in the messy fall of his hair.

"We're alone now, idiot."

Naruto's lips tightened. "I know that, you jerk. I just meant... this was a bad idea."

He'd all but confessed a weakness and Sasuke, like the elite jounin he was, seized upon it. He took a step toward Naruto and said, voice low but carrying clearly in the silence, "Why is that, Naruto?"

Sakura sucked in her breath at his tone, one she wouldn't have imagined him capable of. Sasuke was advancing on Naruto now with single-minded purpose, and Naruto's eyes had widened in panic, but he stood rooted, mouth open and looking hopelessly, beautifully breathless.

"Don't," he said, but there was little conviction in the word.

"Naruto," Sasuke said. His voice was achingly soft, and then they were both moving and Sakura bit into her bottom lip to keep from shouting at them to _stop_.

Their hands moved restlessly, pausing for only a second to trace the ridge of a collarbone or the dip of a waist, consuming in their pursuit to touch and devour... to _claim_. Sakura could find no other word more fitting for the way they touched, the way their lips pressed in fervent demand for... for something only the two of them would ever know, something that, despite everything, she couldn't muster the will to begrudge them for.

She swallowed past the guilt that she'd asked for Kosuke's help. She had inadvertently assisted in this, but she couldn't understand where it'd gone wrong. They had shared, all things considered, a pleasant dinner. Didn't they _want_ to preserve their marriages? Their _friendship_?

She clutched at the grass and reeled at how alone she felt, as if she were the only sane person on their team, watching again from the sidelines as Sasuke and Naruto hurled toward each other, chakra and destruction burning in their hands.

Naruto tripped on the last step to the landing and he fell back, hitting the front door with a grunt. Sasuke followed smoothly, pressing Naruto up against the word 'Welcome' painted on the wood in warm yellow. Sakura had helped Hinata straighten the stencils for those letters the week after she and Naruto had moved in. Now Naruto's pale hair and their hands—his fingers twined through Sasuke's— obscured the greeting. Sasuke's other hand had disappeared beneath Naruto's shirt and Naruto nails scored the seat of Sasuke's pants.

Sasuke's mouth trailed down the side of Naruto's neck, giving Sakura a brief unobstructed glimpse of Naruto's face—the longing carved into the crease of his brows, his lips that moved with words she couldn't hear. His hand left Sasuke's backside long enough to fumble in his pocket before he pushed Sasuke away so he could unlock the front door.

She watched, trembling, as they stumbled into the house and shut the door with a soft click. The grass pricked at her skin as she dropped her head and pressed her fists against her temples. The air grew thin and she found herself gasping for her next breath, realizing with a start that her cheeks were damp. Wiping at her eyes, she rose to her feet.

The house was silent but the lack of explosions was no less portentous than the crack of fist to skin and the furious shouts of her teammates as they fought on a hospital roof a lifetime ago. Then, like now, the links of their team had been rattled. Small chinks had grown into fractures, until Sasuke had severed his ties and left their team broken, in absence of an essential component and incapable of fully functioning without him.

After Sasuke had returned, she had questioned the success of their repaired team, but she had at least hoped that, with Naruto's steadfast faith and her adamant will, they would find a way to make it better. And they had. And she'd believed that maybe... maybe things would be okay.

But now the strength of those bonds was being tested again, and she feared that whatever was bringing the two men together with such perfervid force might in turn break them apart for good.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

**Title**: Tinder  
**Rated**: R  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu (also NarutoxHinata, SasukexOC, and LeexSakura)  
**Warnings**: Adultery  
**Comments**: Canon compliant up to ch 364, and deviates immediately after the Sasuke and Deidara fight.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates.

..

..

**Chapter 5**

Sakura was accustomed to rising early and being alert with minimal effort. Four A.M. training sessions were, however, a bit out of her league.

She resisted the reflexive impulse to mold chakra in her legs and picked up her feet to keep pace with Lee on their fifteenth lap around the village. Lee had set a goal of twenty-five.

"And then Gai-sensei defeated their ring leader and Tenten and I rounded up the rest of the bandits. We were able to return a whole two days early!"

Sakura gave him a wan smile and focused on her breathing. Lacking the massive chakra reserve Naruto had and having never possessed even the same levels of chakra as Sasuke, Sakura generally trained for precision and power, rather than endurance. She respected Lee's strict regimen though. He did this daily, without the aid of chakra, and he wasn't even winded yet.

"Sakura-san," he said. His fingers touched her forearm, and she glanced over to indicate he had her attention. "How was dinner last night?"

Sakura was glad she was already flushed from their exercise. "It went well," she said. It _had_ gone well, initially, so she squashed the little voice inside her that suggested she was lying. "It was nice spending time with Naruto and Sasuke again, even if they're both so stupid sometimes."

Lee was used to hearing her say alternately glowing and disparaging things about her teammates so he took her words in stride.

"I'm glad. And might I say, Saizo's taijutsu has really improved," Lee said, with something of a proud angle to his chin.

"When did you see Saizo?"

"Last night," Lee said.

Sakura stumbled to a stop, rubbery legs trembling under the sudden lack of momentum. "What?!"

Lee paused alongside her, jogging in place. "I was at his house going over katas with Saizo. Didn't Sasuke tell you?"

Sakura bent over and dragged in a lungful of air, both in an attempt to forget that she hadn't eaten anything other than an apple before meeting Lee for their obscenely early run and to control her rising temper. "No," she said. She straightened and wiped at the sweat on her forehead. Granted, they had avoided certain topics between the two men, namely their wives, but, even after she'd introduced the subject of Lee to them, Sasuke still hadn't mentioned the fact Lee was currently at his house.

"Kosuke invited me to stay until Sasuke got home so he could help me demonstrate some techniques to Saizo. But it started getting late and Sasuke hadn't returned yet."

Sakura's jaw tightened at the implications.

"Sakura-san," Lee said, feet growing still as he regarded her reaction with a serious tilt of his head. "Did something happen last night?"

"No," Sakura said, slowly, weighing her words. "We... we just got to talking, and it carried on a bit longer than expected." It hadn't been that late when they'd parted company. Surely Sasuke had at least _gone home_ last night?

"I see," Lee said. She could tell from his tone that he was dubious, but far too polite to question her further on the matter.

Sometimes, she didn't think she deserved Lee. She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his, before pulling back and grinning at his pink ears.

"Let's finish," she said, despite the way her joints creaked like old sofa springs. Lee beamed, complimented her youthful energy, and sprinted ahead.

oOo

"..."

Sakura ignored Naruto's staring and continued to slurp down her ramen.

"I haven't seen you this excited about ramen since that time we tried to get Kakashi to take off his mask."

"Lee," Sakura muttered between bites of food, and Naruto's expression cleared.

"Ah. You trained with him this morning," he said, snickering. Training with Lee always resulted in an impressive appetite afterward. "If you just trained with him more often, you'd get used to his routine."

Sakura put down her chopsticks with a flourish and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. "You know that's impossible. I work late most evenings at the hospital, and I have to be up at six to be ready for classes. I have to keep what sleeping hours I have."

Naruto nodded and cleared away the take-out ramen he'd picked up for her for lunch. Sakura leaned back in her chair, checking the hall outside the teacher's lounge to be sure it was clear. Then she folded her hands in her lap and tried not to wring them as she watched Naruto clean up, oblivious to the question she was battling to ask.

"When... when did Sasuke get back last night?"

Naruto grew still at the sink where he'd been drying his hands. He turned to look at her, the answer already visible in the down-turned corners of his mouth.

"Naruto," she began and had no idea what more to say.

"He left this morning," Naruto said, and looked away before she could see his expression. He sank back into the seat opposite her, face averted.

Sakura bit the inside of her cheek, at a loss. She had expected too much in hoping that an innocent dinner as a team would have any effect on what they were feeling. Naruto loved Hinata. But Sakura suspected that Naruto had loved Sasuke first, even if Naruto hadn't realized it himself. Sasuke had always been his weakness, even in their genin years.

"I don't know what to do," Naruto said miserably. "What should I do?"

The answer seemed obvious to Sakura. He couldn't possibly continue his affair with Sasuke unless he meant to put an end to both his and Sasuke's marriages. "I'm not going to advise you on how to cheat on your wife."

She felt ashamed for snapping at him the moment he paled, his eyes closing with the rush of guilt.

"That's not what I meant," he said, voice quiet.

"I know," she said with a shake of her head. "I'm sorry." She hadn't meant to make him feel worse, but she was still angry for the lie she'd had to tell Lee about Sasuke's long night. "Look, I have to get back to class but... after school, do you want to spar for a bit before my hospital shift?"

Naruto shifted in his seat and something in the way his gaze slid away made her stomach twist. "I can't."

Sakura pushed to her feet. "If you and Sasuke—"

"We're just training," Naruto said.

Naruto had always been such a lousy liar.

oOo

It had been a quiet week at the hospital. By Thursday evening, Sakura had taken to leaving early with an order to call her for emergencies. It was just as well. Her focus had been shot all week.

Naruto still spent inordinate amounts of time with her to avoid being at home, but he and Sasuke had returned to their normal schedule of training with each other in the afternoons. While she knew they did actually train (she'd been unable to help dropping in on them to reassure herself), she also knew they often disappeared together afterward. She had learned to judge how far they'd taken things by how miserable Naruto was with himself the next day.

Knowing this, she had begun replaying unsettling memories through her mind. Naruto with his legs thrown around Sasuke's hips. Naruto's head tilted back, muscles straining in his neck. Sasuke's bare backside, clenching as he moved, and the backs of his thighs pale in the filtered sunlight. The noises they'd made as they clung to each other like there was nothing else in the world but the two of them.

It was disconcerting to admit the memories upset her just as much as they fascinated her. At the time, she'd been too distraught over the entire situation and the enormity of what was happening to appreciate the fact she had never seen them so uninhibited before. It seemed wrong and a disservice to both Kosuke and Hinata that she would think of what they'd done as anything but damning. But Naruto and Sasuke were her family, and there was very little they could ever do, short of killing each other, that would earn them her enmity.

Her disapproval? Her disappointment? Yes, they'd both earned those on numerous occasions. But she didn't think she had it in her to damn them, even if, in the end, they chose each other over their spouses.

They had always ever chosen each other in most everything else.

She turned her cheek into the blanket she'd stuffed under her head, staring unseeing at the broadcast on the television. When she'd been younger, after Sasuke had returned to Konoha with a wife, and Sakura, in spite of her common sense, had still been wounded by the rejection she shouldn't have even felt, she had imagined what Sasuke might look like in the throes of making love. If he held Kosuke as one might expect a lover to, or if he was considerate with her in the way a doting husband might be.

In her mind's eye, she saw Sasuke's mouth on Naruto's, the pads of his fingertips tracing the arch of Naruto's brow, his cheekbone, the line of his jaw. He had leaned into Naruto with lips and hands and body and...

Sakura was struck with the certainty that the emotion Sasuke had shown with Naruto, evident in each touch, had been exclusive to Naruto alone. And vice versa. In light of that, she couldn't help but wonder where that left their wives.

A knock startled her from her thoughts. Rubbing at her eyes, she glanced at the time and rose from the sofa. If that was Naruto at her door again, she would box his ears and drag him back home. He'd been visiting her at odd hours all week, running away from Hinata and the pretense of normality between them.

She opened the door and already had a reprimand halfway out of her mouth when Hinata greeted her. Sakura snapped her mouth shut.

"Sakura," Hinata said, and didn't smile. "May I come in?"

"Y-yes, of course," she said. She stepped aside and swung her door open.

Hinata twisted her fingers around the hem of her shirt and stood in the middle of Sakura's living room until Sakura had shut the door. Sakura made to place a hand on her shoulder, but then thought better of it and moved past her to the kitchen.

"Can I get you a drink?" she asked, as she poured herself a glass of water. Her hands were shaking and she took a moment to gather her nerves before returning to the living room.

Hinata hadn't replied nor moved from her spot in the middle of the living room. She glanced around, distress written in the set of her mouth and that way she had of drawing into herself when she was uncertain.

"Hinata... are you okay? Do you want to sit?" Sakura tried again to put a reassuring hand on the woman's shoulder and found herself unable to offer comfort she had no right to give.

Hinata shook her head. "I... I thought Naruto would be here."

"I haven't seen Naruto since lunch. I'm sorry. Is... is he missing?" She had a fairly accurate guess as to where he was.

Hinata pressed a hand to her chest, looked Sakura in the eye, and said, "Are you and Naruto together?"

Sakura blinked, uncomprehending. She'd just said she hadn't seen Naruto—

Sakura's hand flew up to muffle her gasp, understanding hitting her with all the subtlety of Gamabunta hopping through Konoha. "I—w-what? No! _No!_ Not at all, I would never—" She drew a much needed breath to recompose herself. "No, we are not," she said, as firmly as possible, with a hand against her temple. "Why would you think that?"

Hinata's face crumpled. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to accuse you, I-I just... Naruto's barely home anymore. He hasn't looked me in the eyes for a week and when we talk, it's like h-he's only half there and—and he's been spending so much time with you that I just _assumed_. Oh, I'm so sorry, Sakura."

She drew a breath, probably to continue apologizing, but Sakura cut her off by tugging her forward and folding her arms around the woman's trembling shoulders. Anything she had to say would only sound hollow, so she said nothing. She rubbed circles into Hinata's back until Hinata stepped away, eyes bright but dry.

"Let's sit," Sakura said. Hinata nodded and let Sakura guide her towards the sofa.

"I'm sorry to burden you with this," Hinata said, her voice just above a whisper.

"Think nothing of it," Sakura said. She silently promised to punch both of her teammates for this later.

Settled against the cushions, Hinata tucked her hair behind her ears and stared down at her hands in her lap. "Naruto doesn't... he doesn't..." Cheeks red, she whispered, "He only holds me now at night. And never for long. It's like he can't stand to touch me."

Sakura suspected it was himself he was disgusted with. But she couldn't very well tell Hinata that.

"I think..." She shook her head and her brows drew together, something painful tightening the skin around her mouth. "No, I _know_ he's h-having an affair. I..." She curled in over herself, hands sliding back through her hair, fingers curving against her scalp. Sakura had to strain to hear her whisper, "I can smell someone else on him."

Sakura swallowed around the knot in her throat and wrapped an arm around Hinata's bowed back. Hinata deserved to know the truth, but Sakura couldn't be the one to tell her. Sighing, she rested a cheek against Hinata's shoulder and let her mourn.

oOo

The morning mocked her dismal mood by flooding Sakura's bedroom with sunlight and carrying birdsong in through the open window. She tossed an arm over her face and grumbled into the pillow, intent on sleeping for another fifteen minutes and letting the sun rise without her. Finding sleep had been difficult the night before.

Hinata hadn't lingered overlong. With Sakura having little to offer Hinata outside of a shoulder and an ear, Hinata left with another soft apology and what Sakura had thought might be an acceptance of Sakura's silence. Hinata had taken her hands and thanked her, although for what Sakura couldn't fathom. She could only weather a guess that Hinata suspected Sakura knew more than she'd let on, but couldn't speak of it out of loyalty to Naruto.

That hadn't settled very well in her stomach; she'd spent several long hours staring at the starlight outside her window before she'd finally fallen asleep. Now her head throbbed from both the lack of rest and her misgivings.

It took a moment before she realized the pounding was in fact coming from her front door and not inside her head. She pulled the blanket off and peered at her clock. It was only ten minutes after six AM. She would have had to get up soon to get ready for class anyway, she thought, although that didn't keep her from wondering who the hell was knocking at her door.

When she finally stumbled through her apartment and unlocked her front door, she wasn't prepared for the sight of Naruto standing in the hallway, one arm curled around his waist and looking like he hadn't slept a wink.

"What the...? Naruto? What are you doing here?"

"Can I come in?" he said. He ran a hand through his rumpled hair, fingers catching in the snarled mess.

"Yes, yes, what happened?" she said. Not that she minded, but she was beginning to wonder when she'd added 'counselor' to her list of occupations. Of course, she _had_ been the one to meddle first so she could hardly blame anyone but herself for becoming embroiled.

"Hinata left me," he said.

Sakura was suddenly wide-awake.

"Last night," he clarified. He moved to sit, eyes red rimmed and hollow. "She said she was going to stay with Neji for a while. Until... until I figure out what I want."

She sank to the floor beside him, hands stacked over his knee. "I don't suppose you know what that is."

His lips quirked into the mockery of a smile and said nothing.

She pressed her cheek to the back of her hand, folded atop his leg, and peered up at him. "Do you remember your wedding day, Naruto? You were so anxious, I was convinced you'd pass out in a corner somewhere and we'd have to delay the wedding."

_Finally_, she thought, relieved. Emotion twisted Naruto's face. True, it was pain that did so, but she was glad to see anything other than that eerie stillness and the onset of apathy.

"I was so happy," he said. "I couldn't remember ever being that happy except..." So many emotions flickered across his face that she couldn't keep up. "Except the day Sasuke came home."

She was not at all surprised. "Naruto. Do you _want_ to repair your marriage?"

He sat back and rested his head along the sofa cushion. "I don't know. I don't deserve her," he muttered. "I knew it from the moment she asked me out. She was too good for me. She deserved someone bet--_ow_!"

"Stop thinking like that," she said, lowering her hand. "Hinata never asked you for anything more than... your affection." She had been about to say something unerringly idealistic, like 'your heart.' She didn't think Hinata had ever been much of a hopeless romantic, having had to fight for everything she'd ever truly wanted despite being born into the main house of the Hyuuga clan.

But then she wondered how much of her hesitation was due to the nagging certainty that Naruto's heart had never really been free to give at all (and how terribly idealistic was _that_?). How long had Sasuke had a hold of it? Since that day they'd nearly killed each other at the Valley of the End? When they'd protected each other in the chuunin exams? Or before that even? When Sasuke had thrown himself in front of a spray of needles to protect a boy he'd hardly even known yet?

"I love her," Naruto said. "The day I married her, I knew that, with her, I could live out the rest of my life content. It'd be perfect. I'd be the Hokage and she'd be the head of Hyuuga, and we'd make Konoha better for everyone, together. And... and even if we didn't, that'd be okay too. Because no matter what, with her beside me, I'd be content."

What must Naruto feel for Sasuke, she thought with no small amount of awe, to choose to give up that kind of happiness?

"But... but with Sasuke, it's like I've finally found where I fit into this... whole crazy mess. We could spend the rest of our lives fighting and bickering, and I'd still be happier than any single person had a right to be. Sasuke... reduces me to this," Naruto said, covering his face with his hands and making a pained sound. "I don't have the willpower to turn him away."

She pulled at his arm until he lowered it and she slipped her hand into his. His expression was distant, and she doubted he'd been expecting the words of wisdom she didn't have.

He had always been 'act first, think later,' especially in regards to Sasuke. What was happening now was an inevitable repercussion of the choices he and Sasuke had made, and she accepted that she could do little else than hold his hand along the way and pray for the best.

oOo

The rumor mill was quick to pick up on the separation. Speculation ranged from Hinata finally realizing Naruto wasn't good enough for a Hyuuga, to gross exaggerations about Naruto having a sordid affair with a Suna ninja. Sakura had to resist smacking every person she caught whispering about it. Inevitably, it reached the Hokage.

"What do you know about Naruto and Hinata's separation?" Tsunade barked from behind her desk.

Sakura folded her hands in her lap and said, "Nothing."

"Don't lie to me, Sakura."

Her shoulders sagged. _Be brave, my fearless Sakura!_ Lee's voice in her head had her straightening again with renewed resolve. "I'm sorry, Hokage-sama. I'm not at liberty to say." Then she dropped the formality and said, "Please don't make me betray Naruto's trust."

Tsunade crossed her arms. "Try to be objective, Sakura. In your opinion, will this effect Naruto or Hinata's performance as a Konoha ninja? If so, I might have to take them off the missions roster for a while."

Of course, she knew the Hokage's concern went deeper than that. She cared about Naruto just as much as Sakura did. This was as much an evaluation of his well being as it was how it might affect his performance as a ninja.

"No, Hokage-sama. Naruto would never let this distract him from his duty." She hesitated. "Although I don't think a few days of rest would be unwelcome."

Tsunade seemed to consider this. Then she waved a dismissive hand towards the door. "Very well. You're dismissed."

Sakura smiled and bowed before backing out of the room. She turned and nearly bowled over Sasuke.

"S-Sasuke!"

He reached out to help steady her, a frown marring his brow.

"Did Hokage-sama summon you as well?"

"I've already met with her. I wanted to speak with you. Do you have a moment?"

Sakura could count on one hand the number of times Sasuke had sought out her company first. "Um. Of course. Where did you want to...?" Presumably, he wanted to discuss Naruto, which would require some place more discreet than the Hokage tower.

"Follow me," he said before turning away down the hall. Sakura followed and had to trot to keep up with his brisk pace.

When they'd cleared the tower, Sasuke led her down the road towards the training grounds. It wasn't exactly an inconspicuous spot but at least they'd be away from walls with hidden eyes and ears.

"What has Naruto told you about him and Hinata?" Sasuke asked, when they'd reached the bridge.

"You mean Naruto hasn't told you?"

Sasuke made a noise that could have been either impatience or indigestion. "He's been avoiding me." He sounded less than pleased with it.

Rubbing at her forehead, she wondered just how much to tell him if Naruto himself had refrained from doing so. "Hinata... thought Naruto and I were having an affair."

His gaze cut to her, sharp and doubtful, before he looked ahead again. He snorted.

"Yeah, the irony might be funny in ten years or so."

"And you corrected her?"

The question wasn't posed as an accusation, but she had to wonder just what he was implying with his choice of wording.

"I told her that she was mistaken. That's all."

He said nothing to this, which she took to mean he was satisfied with her answer.

They were at the bend of the road, which took them to the first training field. The area seemed to be deserted, and Sakura couldn't sense any lingering chakra so she felt safe in stopping there and putting a hand on Sasuke's arm to stay him as well.

"Look, Sasuke. I know I'm probably not the one who should be saying this but... Naruto is confused right now. He needs time to think about what he wants. Please, just... do what's best for Naruto and give him his space."

He regarded her with eyes that were infuriatingly difficult to read. "You think you know what's best for Naruto?" There was contempt in his voice, which was nothing new for Sasuke, but she rarely heard it directed at her anymore.

Setting her jaw, she said, "Naruto has always wanted a family."

Where Naruto had barely been able to look at her, Sasuke met her gaze evenly. He had always been subtler in how he chose to convey his anger, although it was never any less violent in its intensity as Naruto's.

"Naruto has a family," Sasuke said. "He has his team. Or are you disputing that?"

"I can't believe... you know that's not what I meant," she said. She turned away, unable to stand the challenge in his eyes that dared her to disagree. How could he treat the situation like it wasn't tearing Naruto in half? She spun on her heel to face him again, hands fisted at her sides to keep them from doing something drastic, like punching him.

"Naruto doesn't need anyone to coddle him," he said.

"Do you think that's what Hinata _does_? _Coddle_ him?"

"I was referring to you."

She drew back, rebuttal caught in her throat. "I don't coddle him," she said, and resented how defensive it sounded. "I... just want what's best for him." It occurred to her that she truly had no idea what was best for Naruto. She wanted him to be happy. But at what cost? "Don't you?"

"Naruto can decide that for himself," Sasuke said.

"Well, you should have thought of that before you pushed him into an affair."

His lips tightened, aggression building in the shifting of his shoulders. Pushing him was a bad idea, but she felt satisfied anyway that she'd made him react.

"Naruto didn't tell you, did he?" he said. "That idiot is the one who started all this." He looked away. "It's impossible to go back to the way things were. Naruto is a fool."

"Can't you even... try?" It seemed impossible to think that he might not even _want_ to. Unlike Naruto, Sasuke had children. He had so much more to lose.

"Naruto started this; he can damn well finish it."

"How can you be so selfish?!" She rubbed a hand over her face and pressed her fingers against her temples. "For Naruto's sake, you can't even... His marriage is at stake here! And _yours_! Don't you even care?"

"Marriage was a necessary convenience," he said, voice softer than before. "Kosuke knew it was never about love." It was the first time he'd ever spoken to her about his marriage; she was momentarily at a loss.

"Kosuke loves you," she said, and knew it had to be true. Just as she knew Kosuke had probably accepted her feelings would never be reciprocated. In that, at least, Sakura sympathized.

Sasuke let the statement linger between them, seemingly disinclined to either acknowledge or discredit it.

"What... what are you going to do?" she asked. But she thought perhaps she knew the answer already. "You're going to find Naruto, aren't you? I don't think that's going to help either of you."

"I don't think that's your decision to make," he said, that hostility returning to underline his words.

She threw up her hands. "If... If you wanted to sabotage your own marriage so badly, why did it have to be with Naruto? You could have chosen anyone else, anyone but him! Why Naruto? Why—?" _Why not me?_ She gasped, startled hands covering her mouth.

Sasuke seemed not to notice, frowning off at some distant point. She swallowed thickly and catalogued the familiar lines of his face, the hair that seemed forever falling across his brow. The set of his shoulders that had never looked quite so small as they had the day Naruto had gotten married.

She loved Sasuke. Not in the way she once had, and not in the way she loved Lee. But she'd never gotten her resolution, not really. She might not have been in love with him anymore, but some kernel of those old feelings had held on in spite of everything. She would probably always love him, just as Sasuke loved Naruto. He loved Naruto the way he could never love Kosuke, or Sakura, or anyone _not_ Naruto, and... and Sakura thought that might be okay. She pressed a hand to her chest, all the turmoil knotted there slowly unraveling.

"I had no intention of sabotaging my marriage," he said. "But Naruto had just as much a choice as I did."

"If... if Naruto and Hinata do remain separated, Naruto won't be happy forever as your..." She coughed. "Your 'other' wom--_man_. When he loves, he does it with his whole heart. Hiding it would only make him more miserable. All this... sneaking around and lying—it's not who he is."

He didn't reply. She assumed his silence meant he already understood this. He knew Naruto better than anyone.

He was glaring off towards the trees again, gaze unfocused and looking pensive. He had never taken his duty lightly—everything he had ever done had been in the pursuit of the promises he'd made himself countless years ago. All those goals, she thought, he had accomplished for his clan by living his life accordingly. He had tried to sever his ties to everyone who might obstruct his path, and she had been too busy nursing her own wounds at the time to wonder what it had cost him to do it.

She thought, perhaps, she understood now what Naruto had probably known all along. What had Sasuke ever done--not for some greater purpose, a self-imposed mission, an _ambition_--that was just for himself?

_This_, she thought. This thing between him and Naruto. It would probably ruin both their marriages (and self-destruction was so horribly familiar a path for them), but she had no right to try and take it from him.

She cocked her head and regarded Sasuke, who had yet to speak or even glance her way. He looked very much like that hurt, angry little boy he'd been, torn between his obligations and something he wanted so very much for himself.

She stepped forward, arms outstretched, before she paused and wrapped her arms around herself instead. She didn't know how to help them. Regardless of whatever they chose, someone would end up hurt and the overwhelming helplessness made her eyes sting. She dashed irritably at the damp corners of her eyes.

When a warm arm settled over her shoulders, she started, gaze lifting to stare dumbfounded at Sasuke's stiff jaw. Then she threw caution to the wind and flung her arms around him, burying her face against his shoulder and ignoring the way he'd grown as rigid as one of the training posts. He patted awkwardly at her shoulder and, despite everything, Sakura smiled.

(to be concluded next week!)


	6. Chapter 6

**Title**: Tinder  
**Rated**: R  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu (also NarutoxHinata, SasukexOC, and LeexSakura)  
**Warnings**: Adultery  
**Comments**: Canon compliant up to ch 364, and deviates immediately after the Sasuke and Deidara fight.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. Sakura narrates.

..

..

**Chapter 6**

Seeing Naruto with a split lip and a bruise the size of the Hokage Mountain on his jaw was not the way Sakura planned to start her Sunday. But Sakura was used to being disappointed lately.

"What the hell happened?" Sakura asked. They stopped outside Ino's shop where Sakura had intended to buy flowers for Lee. He had returned from a mission a little bruised up and would be spending the night in the hospital for supervision. "Did... did Hinata do that? It looks... painful."

Naruto poked at his lip with the tip of his tongue and winced. "It's already healing."

"So?" Sakura pulled him closer and glared at a passing couple who had bent their heads and whispered when they spotted Naruto.

"I confessed to Hinata." He swallowed and lowered his voice. "About an affair. I didn't say who and she didn't ask. She cried. Neji hit me."

"Oh, Naruto." She sighed and passed a hand through his hair, as if he wasn't almost a whole head taller. "It was the right thing to do." At least, she hoped it was.

Naruto nodded, not looking too convinced himself. "I already spoke with the old hag about a divorce. She'll help keep it as quiet as possible, but—" He rubbed his neck and stared down at his feet. "But Hinata is the heir to Hyuuga. Everyone will know soon."

Sakura nudged his hands away from his face before touching his swollen mouth. Chakra tingled along her fingertips as Naruto acquiesced and let her help along the healing.

"What are you going to do with the house?" she said.

"I don't know. Stay there, I guess. It's still home."

"Well then, I'll help you clean it," she said, nodding her head. "And we'll redecorate. And repaint. We'll ask Sai to help too; he hasn't taken a proper vacation in years."

What would become of all the pictures? She would understand if Naruto chose to keep them, especially the portrait of them on their wedding day above the mantle. It seemed to radiate with all the happiness that had been the foundation of their marriage. If only...

But there was no room now for those sorts of thoughts, and Sakura knew better than to indulge them. If Naruto really had started things between them, as Sasuke had said, then perhaps Naruto hadn't been as happy as she'd thought he was. Perhaps this was all for the best. It wasn't the most optimistic of perspectives, but it was the only one she could accept at the moment, for Naruto's sake.

"Sure," Naruto said, when her hands had fallen away.

"It'll be like a whole different place when we're done," she said.

Naruto plucked at one of the petals in a flower display beside him and said, "I'm ending it with Sasuke."

That was, possibly, the last thing she'd expected Naruto to say. "What?" Now? After the harm had already been done, _now_ he chose to end it? Now that Sakura understood, at least in her limited point of view, why they couldn't stop even at the risk of the lives they had worked so hard to build for themselves?

"I lost Hinata, but it doesn't have to be that way for Sasuke," Naruto said. He was still plucking petals from the flower arrangement.

"Naruto," she said. She placed her hands on his shoulders and waited until he looked at her. "I'm not... condoning it." Not necessarily. "But... Sasuke loves you."

Naruto's eyes widened a bit at her words before the corners of his lips curled into the ghost of a smile. "Yeah," he whispered. "I know. But Sasuke has a family. His children should have both their parents."

"Naruto—"

"It's okay," he said, and stepped away so that her hands fell back to her sides. "It'll be okay. Anyway, I... I wanted to ask a favor."

"Anything," she said.

"Come with me to see Hyuuga Hiashi." Naruto made his request to Sakura's feet.

"Naruto... I--" She would have said that it was perhaps not the best idea. But the look on Naruto's face said he would go whether she accompanied him or not. With a sigh, she nodded. "Okay."

oOo

Hyuuga Hiashi was not pleased to see Naruto. Sakura had to hand it to him though--he remained the composed clan leader throughout.

Sakura's heart broke for Naruto all over again, watching him quietly apologize to who would soon be his ex-father-in-law, while bent over his knees, his forehead pressed to the floorboards. Hiashi acknowledged Naruto's apology. Neither man mentioned anything about forgiveness.

As Naruto straightened, looking miserable, Hiashi said, "Some day, you will be Hokage." Surprise lit Naruto's face. "By then, I will have passed leadership of the clan to Hinata. When the time comes, I will leave it up to her to decide whether or not to swear allegiance to you."

Naruto's lips tightened, but he closed his eyes and nodded.

oOo

The next day, the Hokage sent Naruto to Suna to spend a few weeks under Gaara's tutelage. Shikamaru and Sai were sent as well to maintain the façade of a mission—Shikamaru because he made frequent trips between the two villages for his duties as envoy, and Sai because the Hokage had wanted Naruto accompanied by another friend whose loyalty wouldn't be questioned. It helped that Sai also understood how to keep sensitive information quiet.

As the Hokage's apprentice, Sakura had stood in on the briefing so she'd been able to see Naruto off immediately afterward. Naruto had never looked so relieved to clear Konoha's gates.

The hope was that, by the time Naruto returned, the scandal would have blown over and the ripples of discontent among the Hyuuga would have been smoothed down. As the divorce was a result of personal differences rather than political, it wouldn't have too great an impact on the clan's position in the village. Hinata was still the heir to Hyuuga and, even though Naruto had hurt her, Sakura was confident that Hinata would ensure a quiet and civil separation. It wasn't in her to be vengeful.

Two weeks later found Sakura dragging Sasuke out to dinner again, sans their usual third companion. They had spoken very little since Naruto left, and neither of them had been willing to bring up the topic of their missing teammate first. Sasuke looked paler than usual, gray smudges beneath his eyes evidence of lack of sleep. Even if he never admitted it, she could see plain as day that Sasuke was worried about Naruto. It was likely Naruto had ended things between them before leaving Konoha; he wouldn't have wanted to leave any loose ends.

"How are the children?"

Sasuke ate as meticulously as usual. Other than his physical appearance, he showed no other signs of anxiety. He was once again as cool and detached as he'd ever been with her. "Saizo is progressing well. He's ready to learn more advanced medical jutsu."

Sakura was glad to hear it. "I can set up a more routine schedule to work with him if you'd like?"

"That would be fine."

"And Mikoto and Juzou?"

"They hit their targets more often than not." His words were accompanied by the ghost of a smile, affection tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"You know, it's not necessary for them to train every hour of the day," Sakura said, tempering her voice so that he'd know it wasn't a criticism.

Sasuke made a dismissive sound. "Training is just as much for fun as it is preparation. They enjoy it. And they spend plenty of time digging in the dirt with their mother as well."

Sakura smiled at the mental imagery as they lapsed into companionable silence.

Sasuke had cleared half his plate before looking up at Sakura. He waited for her to meet his gaze before asking, "When... When is he scheduled to return?"

She hardly needed to ask who he was referring to. "I don't know. He doesn't have a scheduled date. Whenever the Hokage decides it's time." She offered a small smile. "It's only fed the rumors about Naruto being with a Suna ninja."

Sasuke snorted. "Idiots," he said.

"I've even heard rumors that the affair was with the Kazekage."

Instead of a reply, Sasuke dropped his gaze and returned to eating. Sakura sighed.

"Um... I asked Lee to move in with me."

She smiled when Sasuke's hands stilled over his plate. He looked up, eyebrows raised in question.

"He was so happy, he almost blew the roof off the restaurant," Sakura said, laughing now at the memory. They'd been having lunch between Lee's missions and, perhaps it had been spurred by everything that had happened recently with Naruto's divorce and his separation from Sasuke, but she hadn't wanted Lee to leave. He was just as much a constant as her teammates were.

She'd been considering it for a while anyway and it had felt right to ask. Lee's enthusiastic response had been proof enough that they were ready.

Sasuke looked skeptical though, and she felt heartened by the reminder that he did care about her in his own oblique ways.

"Are you sure you're ready?" he asked, voice neutral.

She nodded. "Yes, very. He makes me... happy," she said, and flushed because it was true. "He makes me feel special and wanted and... and unique, like no one else could measure up to me in his eyes."

Sasuke must have read something in her voice or face because his lips curved, and he looked resigned, although not unhappy about it. She supposed he would understand best how it felt to be special and unique, being an Uchiha.

She talked more about her plans with Lee, and about the Academy and her work for the Hokage, but she could see Sasuke's thoughts were mostly elsewhere as he ate, his eyes distant and unfocused. If she had to hazard a guess, he was probably thinking about Naruto. They hadn't heard from him since he'd left, although Shikamaru's reports were still delivered to the Hokage's desk every few days. She understood his concern, at least on the level of a friend.

They grew silent again, each of them caught up in their own thoughts. Sakura watched Sasuke eat with mechanical motion, his eyes downcast. Sasuke knew how it felt to be unique as an Uchiha. But Sakura wondered if perhaps Naruto made him feel that way too--like no one else could measure up, and not because of his bloodline, but simply because he was Sasuke.

She would never ask, and he would never tell her anyway. But the thought was enough to put a smile on her face, even if it was a melancholy one.

oOo

The next week, Saizo was absent from class. He had never missed a day before. At lunch, Sakura mulled it over while she ate in the instructors lounge.

"You look troubled. What's on your mind?" asked one of her fellow teachers, a chuunin named Takiko.

Sakura shook her head. "Oh, it's nothing. One of my students wasn't in class today."

"Oh, you mean Uchiha-san. Yes, his father was in this morning to--"

"Sasuke?" Sakura said, interrupting her. "Sasuke came by?"

Takiko looked surprised. "Yes, didn't anyone tell you? He was in the office to let the school know Saizo would be absent for the rest of the week."

_Nice of him not to let me know_, she thought irritably. "Did he say why?"

"No, he said it was a family matter." She shrugged and continued eating, but Sakura felt suddenly uneasy.

She set her chopsticks down. The fact he hadn't come to her directly meant he was avoiding having to answer any questions she would have asked. A family matter? What was that supposed to mean?

She knew it was none of her business. Sasuke never confided in her about anything, unless Sakura asked him and even then, he wasn't very forthcoming. Still, as his friend and as his son's teacher, she didn't think it would be out of line to drop by and make sure all was well.

As soon as school ended, Sakura made her to way to Sasuke's home. She would be late for her shift at the hospital, but the other medics would cover for her. The gate to his house was unlocked, as usual, and the wind chimes greeted her as she approached. It seemed quiet. She wondered if they were home.

Kosuke answered the door when she knocked. Sakura came up short at the sight of her. Her hair fell in disarray over her face and shoulders, and her eyes were red and swollen, as if she'd been crying all day.

"What happened?" Sakura asked, fearing the worst. She laid a hand on Kosuke's shoulder, gently for how brittle the woman looked. She listened and heard nothing to indicate the children were home. "Is it the kids? Are they at the hospital?"

"No," Kosuke said, stepping aside to let Sakura in. "It's... they're gone. Sasuke's taken them."

Sakura wasn't sure what she was saying. "What do you mean? Taken them where?"

Kosuke rubbed her hands up and down her arms and turned away. "To the next town over. A short vacation, he said, to explain things to the children."

"Explain things...? Kosuke, I don't understand."

"He's left me," she said.

Sakura's mouth fell open. Had Kosuke found out about Naruto? Had Sasuke _told_ her? Or had he just woken up that morning and decided he was leaving her? Sakura was dumbfounded. If not for the way Kosuke's brow wrinkled and her arms tightened around herself, Sakura would have thought it strange that she could say such words with so steady a voice.

Sakura slid the front door shut behind her and, for lack of anything to say, wrapped her arms around Kosuke's shoulders. "Kosuke," she whispered, at a loss. "I'm so sorry. Let's... let's sit down."

She guided Kosuke to the dining room and settled her into a chair before moving about to prepare a pot of tea. There was an abandoned packet of tea leaves on the counter and she picked it up with hands that shook. She paused, breathed, took a moment to gather herself.

"You don't need to do this, Sakura," Kosuke said, sounding weary but calm, like she'd cried herself out, and now there was nothing left to do but pick up the pieces. Sakura had always known that Kosuke was a strong woman--she had to be to have married Sasuke--but her acceptance of the situation surprised Sakura.

"I want to," Sakura said, and then, tentatively, "Are you... are you going to go after him?"

"No," Kosuke said. Sakura watched her sit with her hands in her lap, rubbing a thumb along the ridge of her knuckles. "I understood when we married that he had chosen me for convenience and nothing else. It was a matter of duty, not love."

Sakura said nothing. What could one say to that? She set the kettle to boil and sat down beside Kosuke.

"I knew what I was getting into," Kosuke said. "But still..." Her eyes closed, pain tightening her mouth. "I didn't expect to love him. Sasuke is a difficult man, but there's a kindness in him that... that he never lets anyone see. And... with the children, I just... I couldn't help loving him."

"Difficult would be a mild way to put it," Sakura said. "But it's hard not to love him." Sakura had spent a good number of her teenage years loving him, and then spent just as long trying to stop. It had never worked.

Kosuke looked away. Sakura wondered if Kosuke had known how Sakura felt about Sasuke. Even if she had, it hardly mattered anymore. It didn't seem like she knew about Naruto though. Would Sasuke tell her when he returned? Would it matter? Their marriage had been for the purpose of producing heirs and little else. Knowing that, Kosuke probably hadn't felt it within her rights to deny him if he chose to stray.

Regardless, Sakura would leave that decision to Sasuke. She'd learned her lesson about meddling.

She stood to remove the kettle from the stove. While she prepared the tea, Kosuke continued talking.

"He's never shown any signs of... of reciprocation. After we had Juzou, he grew... distant. Like I had fulfilled my purpose, and now he had no need of me other than as a caretaker for our children." For the first time since she'd begun speaking, she sounded bitter. "But I didn't mind. I thought it'd be enough as long as he stayed with me."

"I'm so sorry," Sakura said, because she didn't know what else to say. She set the two cups down on the table and Kosuke mumbled a quiet 'thank you.'

"Don't be. It's hardly anyone's fault. He..." She paused, and took a breath to steady her voice again. "He thanked me for helping him fulfill his promise to his clan." She laughed, soft and sudden and devoid of mirth. "He thanked me." She swallowed, eyes falling shut. "He said he would take care of me and make sure I wanted for nothing. I can see the children whenever I want. I suppose I should be grateful for that at least. But I should have expected this. I shouldn't... I shouldn't have hoped for more."

Sakura drew her into a hug. "Do you want to stay at my place tonight?" She didn't want to think of Kosuke sleeping in this empty house.

Kosuke nodded. "I would be grateful."

oOo

"Is this really everything?" Sakura surveyed the state of her living room. There were two large boxes stacked in the middle where Lee had set them, along with a large duffel bag and a folded stack of bedding. It was all he'd brought with him.

Lee nodded, looking uncertain and out of place, as if he expected her to change her mind and throw him out. "I left behind everything I wouldn't need. Gai-sensei said he would find a home for my old furniture." Then he paused and flushed bright red. "Er, b-but I should have brought my futon. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have presumed! I'll sleep on the couch until--Sakura-san?"

Sakura had placed her hands on either side of Lee's face. He kept his hair cut short, but it had begun to grow out again, the tips curling beneath his ears. "I wasn't planning to make you sleep on the sofa, Lee."

He lifted a hand, fingers passing over her cheek with the kind of gentle reverence that made her want to press her face against his neck and sink into him. Lee leaned forward and kissed her, his hands tracing the slope of her neck and the curve of her shoulders. She opened her mouth, slid her tongue along his lips, and felt his arm slide around her back and pull her tight against him.

She was pushing up his shirt, fingernails dragging over his ribs, when there was a tap at her window. The both froze. Sakura opened her eyes and peered sideways at the window and the medic ninja perched on the sill, waving at them.

"Do you think if we ignore her, she'll just go away?" she asked, even as she disentangled her limbs and patted down her hair.

Lee laughed, and turned away from the window to hide his red cheeks. "I doubt it. But it's probably important," he said.

Sakura had only been joking. Mostly. She let him adjust his shirt as she moved to the window to let the medic ninja in. Sakura had recognized her immediately. She worked at the hospital about four nights a week.

"I have a door, you know," Sakura said as she pushed open the window.

"Please forgive me, Haruno-san. I didn't mean to interrupt," she said, sounding mortified. "But we need you at the hospital. Your teammates were just dragged in by Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji."

Sakura was startled. "What? Naruto and Sasuke were? Naruto's back?" Sasuke had returned yesterday with his children and taken up residence again at his house. Kosuke moved into a large, nearby apartment, well within walking distance. Sakura had yet to see Sasuke, but she hadn't even heard about Naruto returning.

"Yes. They were both unconscious when they were brought in."

Most likely, they'd done it to each other. Sakura wanted to smash her fist into the wall--or one of their faces. "Okay, I'll be right there."

The medic ninja nodded and disappeared. Sakura sighed and turned back to Lee.

"I know," Lee said, before she even opened her mouth. "Just go to them."

Sakura gave him a lopsided smile and said, "Thanks."

oOo

Both of them were sitting up in their hospital beds when Sakura arrived. Sasuke was bleeding from a cut on his brow, everything below it purpling into a giant bruise. Naruto didn't look much better, although she could see the swelling in his face receding as he healed.

She didn't even want to begin speculating on what had caused the fight.

"You both look ridiculous," she said as she approached Naruto's bed. "Take off your shirt." Naruto did as he was ordered, wincing as he tugged it over his head. His skin was dotted in large bruises, half healed cuts and split skin bleeding sluggishly along his ribs and chest. Sakura ground her teeth together. "You two are _such idiots_. _How old are you?_ You're worse than my students."

Naruto's jaw clenched and unclenched as she cleaned his wounds. She didn't bother knitting the cuts back together as his body was healing itself just fine on its own. Neither of them had looked at each other since she got there, although the air was thick with tension and unspoken things, things that had clearly not been beaten out of them along with their senses.

"When did you get back?" she asked, softer this time.

"This morning," Naruto said.

Sakura frowned. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"Didn't think it was necessary."

"I missed you," she said.

Naruto offered her a smile, and a soft, "I missed you too."

Neither of them spoke while Sakura prodded at Naruto's wounds and checked his vitals. Then, when her patience was at its end, she said, "Are either of you going to tell me what happened, or do I get to make something up?"

Naruto sighed. "He started it--_ow!_" He rubbed his head where she'd smacked him.

"I don't care who started it, I'm not asking who's to blame. You're both at fault, as far as I'm concerned."

Sasuke continued to stare out the window in tight-lipped silence. Naruto glared at his pillow and said nothing more.

"You are both... so. _Stupid_," she said, and surprised herself by bursting into tears.

Naruto looked first shocked, and then horrified, before settling on panicked. He finally looked over at Sasuke, whose expression Sakura couldn't see on account of the tears blurring her eyes. Things had changed, she thought. Everything had changed. They would never be the same again.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto said, and placed his hands on her shoulders, looking awkward and giving Sasuke quick 'help me out here, you jerk' looks. "I-I'm sorry. Please don't cry."

Sakura sniffled, embarrassed with herself, and wiped her eyes with the cloth Naruto handed her, which she realized belatedly was his shirt. She sighed and gave him a wilted smile and a pat on the shoulder. "Never mind me. You're already half healed. You're free to go."

"Sakura-chan--"

"I'm fine. Just try not to get yourself hospitalized again too soon." She gave him his shirt back, wincing at the spots of wet fabric. "And Lee and I expect you both over this weekend for dinner."

"Um."

Sakura waved him off and turned away to tend to Sasuke. She just wanted to get back to Lee and try to recover some of her good mood. She heard Naruto slip out behind her, the door clicking shut after him.

Once he was gone, Sasuke's eyes fluttered shut, and he said, "Naruto found out I left Kosuke."

Sakura paused, momentarily shocked into stillness. Sasuke looked annoyed by her reaction.

"That's what the fight was about," he said, and then looked away again, apparently finished.

"I see," she said. "Take off your shirt."

He did, smoothly, despite the sorry state of his torso. He wasn't quite as banged up as Naruto though. Sasuke had always been faster. She was glad he didn't remark on her temporary lapse in control.

"So," she said, and hoped he wouldn't clam up. "What now?" It hadn't escaped her notice that he and Naruto were both single now.

Sasuke's face had gone from uncomfortable to blank. "I didn't do it for Naruto. It was merely something that had to be done. There was no need for us to remain together any longer."

She paused and had to suppress the urge to smack him the way she had Naruto. His insensitivity still astounded her. Sometimes, she couldn't remember why she'd ever loved him.

"How are the children?"

His expression softened, his voice losing that hard edge. "They don't understand yet. Saizo is angry with me. I've told them no one is at fault. These things happen. They will come to accept it."

She sighed. And sometimes she remembered exactly why she'd loved him. "Of course they will," she said. They might have just been kids, but they were also ninjas in training. From the moment they could hold a kunai, they were taught that those who couldn't wield one would die by one. It was cruel perhaps, but that was a ninja's life. Ever changing and ever prepared for it. "Saizo loves you. He'll forgive you eventually." She was certain he would. Saizo understood his father more than Sasuke knew.

She finished cleaning and healing his wounds, gave him stern orders to not do any extended training for at least twenty four hours and sent him on his way.

Alone, she sank into the bed where Sasuke had sat, the spot still warm. She glanced over at the other bed, rumpled from where Naruto had lain. Her hands tightened in the sheets and she closed her eyes. Naruto hadn't been back a day before they had gotten into a fight. It had been worse this time--they hadn't hurt each other to this degree in years.

She sat there for a long while, soaking in the silence and the aftermath of everything that had happened, until the light outside the window grew dim and a nurse walked in to change the sheets, startled to find her still there.

.

.

.

.

**Epilogue**

It was summer in Konoha, the heat building during the long days and weighing down the shoulders of everyone who stepped out from the shade.

The first trimester of the new school year had just ended, and the students were released before noon, rushing out the Academy doors with the air of prisoners freed from long captivity. Saizo had paused near the door, looked back to wave, and reminded Sakura of their scheduled training session tomorrow morning. He always reminded her, even though he knew well enough that she wouldn't forget. Kosuke liked to sit in on his training and watch.

Lee met her at the door to their apartment with a greeting and a kiss. He filled her in on his morning meeting with his team, where Neji had voiced his disapproval of Hinata's new boyfriend who, when they met, had flinched every time Neji looked at him. Then Lee gathered up the two bento he'd prepared, and they made their way down to the training grounds.

They were coming over the bridge when Sakura stopped. Lee continued on for a few steps before looking back at her in question.

Across the field, beneath the shade of the tree line, Naruto and Sasuke sat side by side, eating their lunches and stealing food from each other's bento. There were empty bento boxes stacked beside them, and nearby, the children were throwing shuriken at wooden targets. Saizo corrected Juzou's aim while Mikoto hit her target with growing precision, already showing the signs of her brother's aptitude.

Beneath the tree, Naruto set his lunch down and laid his hand on top of Sasuke's, their fingers lost in the grass. Sasuke turned to look at him, expression neutral. Smiling, Naruto leaned forward and brushed his mouth against Sasuke's. Sasuke let him for a span of a breath. Then he leaned away and, lips quirked, shoved Naruto hard enough to unbalance him. Naruto laughed.

Sakura pressed a hand to her chest, throat tight. She should have never underestimated them. Grinning, she took Lee's waiting hand and rushed to join her teammates.

It was summer in Konoha, and all was well.

_The End_

..

..

But wait! There is one thing left--a side story/missing scene from Sasuke's point of view. Stay tuned, folks!


	7. Kindle

**Title**: Kindle  
**Rated**: R (just barely)  
**Pairing**: SasuNaruSasu  
**Warnings**: None  
**Comments**: A Tinder side story--although it's really more like a missing scene lol. Takes place between the end of chapter 6 and the epilogue.

**Summary**: Naruto and Sasuke aren't very good at settling down. But they eventually figure it out.

..

..

The house was silent. On any other day, Sasuke would revel in the peace and take the opportunity to meditate without the chance of Mikoto sneaking up behind him to point and giggle, or breaking his concentration by having a one-sided argument with Juzou at the top of her lungs, or Saizo sitting down next to him to mimic his pose only to fall asleep ten minutes later because even though Saizo was a prodigy, he was also an eight year old boy.

But Sasuke had grown uncomfortable with silences lately. The week away from Konoha had been filled with angry silences, mostly from Saizo. It was only recently that Saizo had begun to speak to him again, in that hesitant, grudging way that translated into 'I'm angry with you, but I love you too, and I don't want you to hate me for being angry.' Saizo's fears were unfounded, and Sasuke had told him so.

Still, things were stilted. They needed time to mend, and Sasuke was well familiar with the ways in which time did and did not heal broken families. This had been a rift of his own making, and Sasuke would not regret it. The children were with their mother now, helping her settle into her new home.

He sat on the steps to his backyard, watching the way the wind made the ropes in his artificial jungle sway. A moment later, Naruto was crouched atop the fence.

Sasuke wanted to look away, go inside, and shut the door. He glared at him instead. "What do you want?"

Naruto hopped down, feet silent as he crossed the stretch of grass. "Same question."

Sasuke scowled. Last time, that 'same question' had lead to them beating each other unconscious and ending up in the hospital with an irate Sakura. He had no desire to repeat the experience so he held his temper in check.

"_Why?_" Naruto asked. His face twisted into remorse as he looked around the empty backyard, as if imagining the ghosts of Sasuke's children training at their posts and Kosuke bent over her vegetable garden.

"I told you. My marriage was a matter of convenience. There was no longer any reason for us to remain together."

Naruto's hands were shaking at his sides. "You are _such a bastard_."

Sasuke assumed the only reason Naruto hadn't tried to punch him yet was because he, too, didn't want a repeat of their last fight. "Don't presume to understand my relationship with Kosuke," Sasuke said. "You don't know a thing."

"Then _try me_," Naruto said.

The two of them glared wordlessly at each other for several tense seconds, before Naruto deflated. He dropped down beside Sasuke on the stairs with a dramatic sigh.

Sasuke had never told anyone before about the circumstances leading to his marriage. Naruto had asked, certainly, but Sasuke had never felt inclined to tell him. It was none of Naruto's business. It still wasn't, but... Naruto had been so angry that morning he'd returned to find Sasuke had left Kosuke. Sasuke could recall only one other time Naruto had been so furious with him, and that had been well before Sasuke's return to the village.

With only a brief hesitation, Sasuke said, "I saved her."

Naruto looked up, one eyebrow hitched. "What?"

"Kosuke," Sasuke said. "Her parents were killed by thieves. She was hiding beneath the stairs. They set her house on fire. I was nearby, and I heard her screaming."

Naruto's bemusement transformed into a frown, the grave set of his mouth indication that he understood Sasuke wasn't telling him this just to fill the silence.

"She didn't have anywhere to go, so... I offered her my name." Sasuke looked down, letting his hair shield his face from Naruto's searching eyes. "I needed heirs. She needed a family. I made sure she understood that love wouldn't be factor. She said she'd just met me; she didn't care about love. It was a good arrangement."

He could practically hear Naruto's mind processing the information. He said, "Sasuke... Look, it was good of you to... to offer her a family. But you can't just take it away now that you're done making babies."

"I've hardly taken them away. She's free to see them as often as she likes."

"That's not the point!" Naruto stood, as if towering over Sasuke like a big, blond idiot would help his argument. "She was your _wife_ for _eight years_. Did you honestly think she wouldn't grow to love you?"

Sasuke closed his eyes and said, "Whether she did or not is irrelevant."

Naruto made a strangled, choking sound as he was fighting back another verbal explosion. When he seemed to have gotten himself back under control, he took a steadying breath and said, "You had a chance to be happy, Sasuke. I was trying to fix things for you, and... and you _blew it_."

Sasuke tilted his head to look up at him, expression cool. "Do you regret that your chance is now over?"

He almost regretted his words when the hurt flickered over Naruto's face. Then Naruto set his jaw and sat back down, eyes averted. "Yes," he said, voice quiet. "Because I hurt Hinata."

Sasuke's lips tightened. He adjusted the sleeve of his yukata and wondered if Naruto would ever try to marry again.

"And no," Naruto said. Sasuke looked up at him. "Because... it's you." He sighed, lashes fluttering shut for a moment before fixing Sasuke with that intense blue stare. "But it doesn't matter now. I gave you an out, and all you did while I was gone was make it worse."

"My time with Kosuke was over. Leaving her was simply how it was always meant to end."

Naruto rubbed a hand over his face. "You're a jerk, you know that, right?"

Sasuke didn't reply. Naruto asked a lot of rhetorical questions.

"So what now then?"

"Nothing has changed. My children and my job are my priorities."

Naruto said nothing to that, and they both lapsed into silence. What now, indeed. Despite Sasuke's words, _everything_ had changed. His children were still confused and rightfully so. But what should he have done? Continued going through the motions of a marriage long past its purpose? By the time Juzou had been born, it had become little more than cohabitation. As he'd told Sakura, leaving Kosuke had not been for anyone's sakes but their own. Kosuke deserved the chance to be with someone who would love her.

As for Naruto, against all reason, how to deal with him was far more complicated. He could never look at Naruto again and not think about how his skin tasted, how the muscles in his stomach shifted beneath Sasuke's hands, the way his thighs tightened around Sasuke's hips, and the little hitch in his voice right before he came. If Sasuke didn't care so much about the moron, he would hate him for having started this.

He thought about that mission, months ago, where it had all began. They'd been lying on their backs beside the campfire, staring up into the black net of twining branches and the starlight just beyond. Sasuke couldn't even remember what they'd been talking about. What he _did_ remember--would probably never forget--was the way Naruto had risen to one elbow and leaned over him, his hand braced in the dirt beside Sasuke's head so that he'd blocked Sasuke's view of the night sky.

Naruto had mumbled a garbled version of Sasuke's name, and then kissed him. Sasuke couldn't even say what had prompted Naruto to do such a thing, and he hadn't asked. He'd simply kissed back.

It had spiraled out of control so easily. Neither of them had been able to put an end to it, not this thing that was both new and familiar, something they had been straining towards for the better part of a decade without having ever realized it themselves. They had both seen their folly to the end. They were probably idiots for it, but Sasuke knew that they deserved nothing less than what their actions had wrought.

Naruto said, in that hushed tone, "So is this how _we_ were meant to end?"

Sasuke gave him a blank look, uncertain of what Naruto was fishing for. "How would _you_ answer that?"

With a sigh, Naruto said, "Jiraiya taught me that... we're all the writers of our own stories. And the end can never be determined until you've reached it, and even then... it's only the end if you make it so."

Sasuke couldn't help the smirk that twisted his mouth. "Wise for an old man who wrote porn."

Naruto smiled too, and something tightened in Sasuke's chest. "I... Sasuke." His smile faded, but there was a hopeful tilt to his brow. "I don't want this to be the end."

Sasuke ignored the fluttering in his stomach. What did Naruto want from him? The idiot had started this, had tried and failed to stop their affair from ruining them, and then he'd ended things before packing up and disappearing to Suna for weeks. Now this? What the hell did Naruto _want_?

"You broke up with me, remember?"

Naruto stiffened. Then his gaze fell away, lips quirking in what looked like resignation. "Yeah." He dragged a hand through his hair, scratching his scalp a few times before nodding. "Yeah. You know what, you're right. Forget--"

Sasuke kissed him. He hadn't quite thought it through, but he couldn't let Naruto finish that sentence. Sasuke had said a lot of things in his lifetime that he maybe should not have. And there were a great many more things Sasuke had _not_ said that he maybe should have. This one time, _especially_ this one time, he had to get it right.

Against Naruto's mouth, he whispered, "Don't... walk away. This isn't... this isn't the end. You and I..."

Naruto swallowed. Sasuke could feel his smile against his lips. "I like the sound of that," Naruto said, and kissed him back.

A moment later, Sasuke had Naruto flat against the floorboards of the porch, their legs trailing down the steps. Sasuke filled his hands with Naruto's hair, the line of his neck, his shoulders, anything he could touch. He fit their bodies together and kissed the moan from Naruto's lips.

Then Naruto's hands cupped his face and pushed him away. "Wait, wait wait."

Sasuke glared down at his flushed face. "What now?"

Naruto returned the look and said," If this is going to work, we have to do it right. You know... we'll... uh... take it by stages."

Sasuke quirked an eyebrow. "... Are you telling me you want me to court you?"

Naruto's face turned red, and he cuffed the side of Sasuke's head. Sasuke gave him a resentful look. "No, you jerk. I just mean we shouldn't jump right back into..."

Sasuke reached down and covered the bulge in Naruto's pants, squeezing once.

Naruto's face grew redder. He finished lamely, "Uh... sex."

"Sure that's what you want?" Sasuke molded his palm to Naruto's erection and rubbed him harder.

"I hate you," Naruto gasped, and arched into Sasuke's hand.

Sasuke smirked and kissed him deeply, sliding his tongue across the roof of Naruto's mouth. Naruto groaned, hands smoothing back from Sasuke's jaw to clutch at his hair.

When Sasuke drew back, Naruto dragged in a breath and said, "Promise me we'll do this right. I don't want to disappoint Sakura-chan again."

Sasuke nipped at Naruto's lip, just hard enough to sting. Naruto pinched him in retaliation. "Fine. Idiot. Now shut up."

Naruto wrapped his legs around Sasuke's waist and, thankfully, obeyed.

_The End (for real this time)  
_


End file.
